In a few days it will officially be fall, or autumn, and the day I wrote this it sure felt like it. After a few minutes on the very chilly front porch I retreated to the living room coffee table by the window to see what birds were around.
We’re already experiencing fall bird migration, the time when neotropical species that come here to breed go back to warmer climates. That morning there were ruby-throated hummingbirds around, and bay-breasted, Wilson’s, and black-throated green warblers were in the trees.
The morning haze in the Lehigh Valley temporarily prevented me from seeing nearby wooded hillsides, but I knew that the tops of some trees were already browning or turning orange/red. There are conflicting reports as to whether or not we’ll have good fall color this season, but that remains to be seen.
Recently my husband David has been up in our woods cleaning up overgrown areas. And one day he got to a spot he hadn’t accessed in a while where he found at least 15 dead ash trees and one downed large oak.
He believed the downed oak was a red oak, and he picked up two acorns and brought them down for me to see. So I checked my tree books, especially one written by David Sibley, because it has photos and measurements of acorns, and he was right. Obviously you can identify oaks by their leaves, bark, and structure if you’re knowledge about trees, but examining their acorns sure helps.
I have a lot of good bird guide books, but David Sibley is also the author of the one I use most. It covers all North American species with range maps showing where they’re normally found.
And it has drawings, not photos, of both the adults and juveniles of every species. Often when I’m asked to identify a bird it turns out to be a juvenile or female that’s not depicted on a website or in the book someone has.
Currently smartweeds, Polygonum species .in the buckwheat family, are blooming in wild areas. The easily recognized ones are the Pennsylvania, or pink, smartweeds, but there are more than 30 different ones varying in color and height.
Also now starting to bloom in unkempt places are wild asters. There are many different kinds and colors of them too, depending on what habitat you’re in. But the ones most often seen are the New England asters with purplish/blue flowers.
Field corn is now turning brown and at many places white bindweed flowers stick up atop its stalks. If you’re not a gardener you may admire these white or pink morning glory flowers, but, as their name says, they can bind or smother the plants they grow on.
One day while walking through our fields looking for birds, I stopped to look at all the bindweed flowers and a spotted lanternfly landed in my hair. Nearby rose-breasted grosbeaks were feeding on insects and I wished that one of them would eat the lanternflies.
A graduate student at Penn State named Ann is doing research on what kinds of birds eat lanternflies. So if you see a bird, or anything else for that matter, eat a lanternfly, contact her at birdsbitingbadbugs@gmail.com.
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September 20, 2020 at 08:30PM
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Signs of fall bird migration are already in the air | Lehigh Valley Nature Watch - lehighvalleylive.com
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