Summer's End...

The last of the hay has been baled. :~)  As we were finishing the field, we saw again, two young coyotes poking their heads up above the tall grasses.  They were catching and eating grasshoppers. I don't think a coyote has an easy life but these two seemed to be plump and in good health.  

Fall colors are beginning to show up along the trail on which Millie and I walk every day.  Our oldest granddaughter, who enjoys walking as much as I do, went along with us today. We stopped along the way and picked some muscadine grapes which are quite plentiful this year.  The granddaughter filled her pockets.   

I have much love for this old well-worn path that winds past the upper pond, over hill and through fields and meadows. In summer the tanagers, cardinals and mockingbirds sing from the thickets and treetops, but today there was only the scream of a Red-Tailed hawk and the caws of some noisy crows.  

The latest set of twins were lying in the upper meadow, while Momma Cow grazed nearby.  She thought something looked suspicious, so she came running and quickly took her babies away.   I am thankful that she can, at least, count to two, for most cows can't, or won't, so that we have to raise the rejected one on a bottle.  It has been a year for twins, and we currently have two bottle calves to care for.  

Safe Travels...

"The happening was migration.  It was full upon the Northern Hemisphere.  The shorter hours of sunlight and lowering temperatures were telling millions of birds to go south.  The event had begun in mid-August.  The loons, geese, ducks, and shorebirds had heard the message and had left the barrens of Alaska and Canada.  A few days later the swallows and swifts felt the change and left the Northeast.

And then it happened.  Frightful hopped from limb to limb until she reached the wispy top of the ancient hemlock.  She took a bearing on the sun's rays.  She fixed on a longitude between ninety and seventy degrees.  After many takes, the direction was indelibly printed on her brain.  She pointed her head and body along the invisible line.  She bent her knees and ankles.  She lowered her wings.

Frightful flew.  She did not look back.  She rode the prevailing wind over mountains and rivers into unknown territory..."

~ Frightful's Mountain by Jean Craighead George   (A favorite little trilogy from my school teaching years - My Side of the Mountain, On the Far Side of the Mountain, and Frightful's Mountain)  

Our weather guy posted this map yesterday which I found fascinating.  We are smack in the middle of high migration traffic rate.  It was estimated that yesterday there were 60,000,000 birds flying south over Arkansas and Oklahoma.  And, to think somewhere out there are my little birds!  

Safe travels, little ones!  We will see you in the spring.