It’s Fall!

Today is the first day of fall and my goodness, what a change!  In fact the change started yesterday, it is like Mother Nature suddenly looked at a calendar, realized where we were at, and pulled the plug on the sunshine…

‘cause this it the weather now.  Not wet, just gray….  I’m going to cheat a bit and combine some pictures from yesterday as well as today as both days have been similar – except for a surprise today!

yesterday it really looked and felt like fall with a breeze bringing down the leaves…

Sparrows continue to fly up out of the grass, yesterday this one landed in the same spot as the Lincoln of a few days ago, but I’m pretty sure this is a young Song Sparrow.  Song Sparrow’s, although they have been here all along, are just starting to make themselves visible again.

Great Blue Heron were moving around a bit…this guy was over by the dried up pond to the south of the bench…

while this one (sorry about the fuzzy photo) was out on the flats, but note the very small bird of prey at the top of the picture – a Merlin I think…it was big enough to upset the heron…

that took flight….

and landed up in one of the ‘eagle trees’ by the viewing platform.

a few Mallards around – they are starting to molt into their normal plumage…

there have been, probably, hundreds, of American Robins about.  Some are still eating berries, but most are very restless, flying from tree top to tree top, migration obviously on their minds….and speaking of migration…

this showed up outside my place a few minutes ago.  It is a White-throated Sparrow.  Related to the White-crowned Sparrows and mixed in with a flock of them, the White-throated is normally only seen east of the Rocky Mountains, but one or two seem to show up every year during migration.  With luck it might hang around for a day or two and maybe the weather will brighten somewhat so I can get a better photo.

Also around today and not seen for a little while were some American Goldfinch and Pine Siskens and I’m sure a Banded Pigeon flew this morning when I went out to fill the feeders, but haven’t seen or heard it since.