Autumn

The astronomers would have us believe that autumn is a time, that long stretch of short days between the second equinox and the second solstice of the year. But they’re wrong, of course; culturally and emotionally, autumn has always been a place. And in North America, that place is anywhere Canada Geese set their wings over gambrel-roofed barns, red squirrels and eastern chipmunks scamper along gray branches, and White-throated Sparrows pipe from deep within the purplish foliage of a bramble hedge.

I paid a visit to autumn today with a lunchtime walk at the Rogers Center in Chenango Co., New York. The skies were gray and eventually wet, but that just made the leaves on the hillsides shine the brighter; the weather also kept me from what I’d hoped might be a raptor flight, though a couple of Red-tailed Hawks and a fine silvery male Northern Harrier were some consolation.

Best of all, though, were the sparrows. White-throated and Song Sparrows (the Songs startlingly dark compared to our elegant fallax birds in Arizona) were both common, and a small flock of White-crowned Sparrows, all them handsome brown first-winter birds, was feeding in the open on a gravel road. There were only a few Dark-eyed Juncos around, but they were Slate-colored, a bird that is no longer everyday for me at any season. A short hedgerow bordering a fallow field covered with goldenrod and common milkweed was the shelter of choice for half a dozen Field Sparrows, a nice surprise on a day when I’d almost hoped to run across the season’s first American Tree Sparrows.

Culturally, emotionally, I think it’s time for slippers and some hot chocolate now!