November 17

 Today the November tang of a fresh north wind was everywhere. The air is cool and a delight to taste. The trees are nearly all bare. It was not the leaf that  caught my eye but the leaf twig. It’s a brilliant red that I never noticed before.

Rosie’s thicket was quiet. It will take a snow fall to bring it back to life. Over the train yard, a Red Tail hawk was soaring. Not a good sign for the resident pigeons.

I came across this very well designed winter bird feeder. The small birds will ignore it for a while and then it will look better and better  until all the seed is gone, sometime in January.

A Downy was very busy feeding off the bark bugs.

The more interesting the bird, the more likely you are to cough loudly. I came very close to a Great Blue Heron and then of course, the throat tickle turned into a full blown whoop of a cough. The heron immediately fled.

It’s not unusual to see a cormorant with it’s wings spread in the sunlight. It’s just that this is the first that I have ever seen do it high grass. Usually, it’s only on a beach or pier or sand bar that they do this. On the other hand, today was such a bright day that anywhere would work.

Out in the flats, I walked along this little path and thought of allee. That’s a landscape feature usually found on large old estates of a walkway extending straight into the distance with a line of trees to either side. They are quite impressive. This allee was through a stand of Phragmites and is also quite impressive.

I was surprised to find a small flock of Mourning Doves out next to the Boardwalk. I thought that they had all gone south.

The butterflies seem to be gone except for this milkweed seed turned into a vegetarian butterfly. There were still plenty of crickets sounding in the high grass of the meadow. The flying insects have disappeared but the ground huggers are still here. We really haven’t had a serious hard frost yet.

The best treat of the walk was this diminutive bloom.  I don’t know its name but Rose of November seems appropriate.

A bright shiny day. A bright shiny walk.

Ciao!

-Jorge

This entry was posted on November 17, 2009 at 5:16 pm and is filed under Daily. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.