The Longest Autumn
red oak in snow (all photos in this post by Dave Bonta except where indicated)
Every autumn the first hard frost comes later. Back in the 1970s and early 1980s, when we were engaged in intensive gardening, we could expect a hard frost in the first week of October. Gradually, as the years passed, the hard frost date arrived in the second week. Then, in this century, it moved into the third week. And last October it finally came on October 28.
Just as the date for the first hard frost has advanced year by year, so too has mild autumn weather. Instead of several days of Indian summer weather at the beginning of November, we have stretches of Indian summer weather throughout November and, last autumn, well into December.
Final leaf fall is also later every year. In the seventies and even into the eighties, we could count on a brisk wind at the end of October shaking down every last leaf and leaving us with the bare branches of November. Yet despite last October’s heavy snowstorm, most of our red, black, white, chestnut and scarlet oaks held on to the majority of their leaves until the third week of November.
Remembering the previous year’s mid-October snowstorm that brought down so many trees and branches overburdened with leaves and snow, I was apprehensive when I woke to snow on October 29. As the snow piled up on leaves and branches, I walked down our road, dreading to hear the sound of breaking branches, but I heard only a few. Once I picked up an oak branch, its leaves heavy with snow, and marveled at its weight.
Later in the day, the thermometer slowly rose to 34 degrees. The trees dripped even as it continued snowing, but the warmth saved most of our leafy trees. The one casualty I found was a large, live, black oak along our road. But it was hollow throughout much of its trunk length and would have come down soon in any case.
bottom of the First Field in an October snowstorm
By November most of the snow had melted, and we finally had a couple weeks of what is normally “October’s bright, blue weather” and dazzling leaf color after a mostly soggy October. The sugar maples along the Far Field Road were still a blaze of red and gold. The coppery gold of American beeches lit up the hollow. And from Alan’s Bench, I gazed at the oaks of Laurel Ridge, which glowed reddish-gold and burnt orange.
Although I saw an occasional buck during my walks, squirrels, chipmunks, and turkeys were scarce. What few acorns the oaks had produced had been plucked from their branches by blue jays weeks before. I also saw little evidence of hickory nuts. Even our black walnut yard trees hadn’t produced many nuts. After the previous year’s feast, the wildlife was faced with famine. As soon as I put my bird feeders up, in early November, they were mobbed by gray squirrels and chipmunks.
The birds were not as affected even though our wild grape crop had also failed. Berry eaters, such as robins, cedar waxwings, and bluebirds still called most warm days. Carolina wrens caroled back and forth in our yard. The female tapping cardinal returned to our stairwell window. Winter wrens called and bounced up and down beside the stream. Golden-crowned kinglets foraged in the spruce grove. And, in Margaret’s Woods one day, I found dozens of singing, foraging white-throated sparrows, several dark-eyed juncos, a Carolina wren, and at least one fox sparrow in a large hedge of multiflora rose covered with bright red rose hips.
Raptors, too, were plentiful. A male American kestrel sat on his favorite power pole overlooking our First Field. On a hazy warm day in late November a male northern harrier flew silently past me as I sat on Coyote Bench. Driving down our hollow road, I flushed a sharp-shinned hawk. And on Thanksgiving Day our son Steve and his wife Pam watched a barred owl swoop down on a tree branch beside the Far Field Road. Steve also saw a golden eagle migrating along Sapsucker Ridge that day.
Hermit Thrush in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, November 9, 2011 (photo by Christopher Eliot, Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial licence)
But I had the most unexpected sighting of Thanksgiving. As I circled the Far Field on Pennyroyal Trail, I flushed a hermit thrush. Never had I seen one so late in the season. When I checked McWilliams’s and Brauning’s The Birds of Pennsylvania, it reinforced my belief that hermit thrush migration peaks during October, which is when we usually see them. By the second week in November most hermit thrushes have moved south. A few winter over at low elevations in Pennsylvania, particularly in the Piedmont area. But more surprising than my sighting occurred three days later, on a warm November 27, when our son Dave heard a singing hermit thrush on Laurel Ridge. Since we rarely hear one singing here during spring migration, we were especially surprised to hear one so late in the autumn.
Whether it was the acorn failure or merely the lure of our birdseed, we had many excellent views of southern flying squirrels at our feeder area. Because it was still warm and some bears were no doubt still about, I brought in my feeders every night throughout November and December. On Thanksgiving evening I turned on the back porch light before going out to retrieve the feeders. A flying squirrel was busily scarfing up seeds on the porch floor. So intent was it that my husband Bruce was able to take several photos of the creature through the storm door. It only fled down the steps when I went out to get the feeders.
My next sighting was the first of December when I watched one flying squirrel chase off another on the birdseed-covered ground below the back step. The victor continued eating, even burying most of its body beneath the grass and seeds in its quest for food.
A full moon illuminated the sky on the tenth of December when Bruce startled a flying squirrel on the back porch. It zipped up the porch railing and sailed over near the juniper tree where it made a rough landing and disappeared down slope. The next evening I surprised the flying squirrel on the back porch steps, and it performed the same maneuver as it had for Bruce the previous night.
flying squirrel on a black locust tree in Plummer’s Hollow
We saw at least one flying squirrel at our feeder area throughout December, and we thought it was only fair that we should feed flying squirrels at night since we hosted at least 11 gray squirrels by day.
Whether or not the flying squirrels were affected by the unusual warmth, at least one woodchuck was. Below the back porch a fat male woodchuck continued to emerge from his hole every afternoon to eat the fresh greenery on the slope into December. The last time I saw him was mid afternoon on December 22, again a record breaker here for a woodchuck. Usually, they are tucked into their hibernation dens by mid-November and we don’t see any until the following February when the males are busy visiting female dens.
Plants also responded to the continual warmth. Several so-called green immigrant flowers, those that came from over seas, bloomed later than I could remember. On November 27 I found a pearly everlasting (Anaphalis margaritacea) blooming beside Alan’s Bench. A member of the Composite family, it was once dried and used in making memorial wreaths and for decorating vases and wall brackets. Today it still appears in dried flower arrangements. Its small, white, globular-shaped flowers grow in clusters atop a cottony stem with thin, toothless leaves that are sage-green above and woolly-white beneath. Other names for it are silverleaf, cottonweed, lady-never-fade, Indian posy and ladies’-tobacco. Since it came from Europe, Indian posy seems inappropriate and I doubt whether ladies smoked it. But they did use it for coughs and as a poultice for bruises in pioneer days. Its latest blooming month, according to Rhoads’s and Block’s The Plants of Pennsylvania, is October, which was why I was amazed to find it flowering in late November.
On that same day several forsythia flowers blossomed on a scattering of branches. Forsythia originated in South China where it grew wild. The Chinese called it golden bell. Robert Fortune, a young Scot, was sent into China to collect new plants for the Royal Horticultural Society of London in 1845, three years after the Opium War, when westerners were resented and mistrusted. So Fortune, disguised as a Chinese man, dressed in native garb and wearing a pigtail, explored the South China coast with a crew of Chinese workmen in springtime. There he found the countryside filled with forsythia. Although he later named it for the second curator of London’s Chelsea Gardens—William Forsyth—who was also a Scot, golden bell is a more evocative name that was quickly forgotten.
Dandelions also thrived in our driveway and during this longest autumn, I found a dandelion blooming on Butterfly Loop on December 5. It too came over with the colonists who used it as a cleansing herb and pot herb. It probably originated in Asia Minor long before anyone thought to notice it because both the Greeks and the Romans cultivated it. The Chinese called it earth nail and used its long taproot and green leaves for food and medicine while in Japan it was grown as a decorative plant. In Britain, the Celts used it for both food and wine and the Anglo-Saxon tribes that settled in the British Isles after the Romans left valued it as cure for scurvy and as a laxative and diuretic. Here in Pennsylvania, the Germans grew dandelion in their gardens and even today the Amish value and use the plant in early spring. Years ago, I too harvested the leaves every spring and served them with an Amish bacon dressing that I devised.
dandelion seedhead
As the warm weather persisted, so too did Lyme disease ticks and I continued to pick them off my pants throughout December. Even on December 15 it was 54 degrees late in the day.
It rained on the winter solstice and the following day. But it was back to Indian summer the next two days before winter weather finally settled in, at least for a short time. What changes I have seen during my 41 years here on our central Pennsylvania mountaintop. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined, back in the 1970s, when autumn began at the beginning of September and ended at the end of November that the seasons would shift and autumn would become the longest season of the year.
Goodbye To All Of That
Basswood leaves in September
Once again the forest is almost empty of birdsong. Only an occasional blue-headed vireo holds forth. Even the waves of migrants are mostly quiet as they flit from tree to tree searching for insects and fruit. Noisy blue jays call as they harvest acorns. Eastern wood-pewees cry “pee-a-wee.” Confused looking immature ovenbirds blunder about on the forest floor. How brief is the time of birdsong. “Our” birds are already heading south to spend most of their year in warmer climes.
Along Sapsucker Ridge Trail, resident black-capped chickadees lead migrants to food sources high in the treetops, but I catch glimpses of eastern wood-pewees, red-eyed vireos, black-throated green, Nashville and magnolia warblers. Flocks of cedar waxwings join in along with resident tufted titmice, white-breasted nuthatches, and downy woodpeckers. When I reach the spruce grove, I hear the tin drum calls of red-breasted nuthatches. They, at least, may be coming to spend the winter.
Most people welcome the cool, crisp days of autumn, and I can’t deny that by September I’m tired of the heat and humidity of summer. But I’m not tired of birdsong, butterflies, wildflowers, and the green of our deciduous forest. All too soon the green will be replaced by a brief flame of gold, orange, scarlet, and purple. By the end of October, most of those leaves will be on the forest floor, and my world will be primarily gray and black for almost six months.
Because I regret the approaching end of the fruitful season, I’m out every day in September, gathering memories to take me through those months until spring returns. One windy afternoon I sit in our goldenrod field with our four-year-old granddaughter Elanor. The plants tower over her head and she pretends it is a rainforest. (She’s a big fan of Dora the Explorer.) I am the mommy tiger and she the baby tiger. But mostly we marvel at the golden beauty enveloping us. She uses her binoculars to look at the honeybees and bumblebees nectaring on the goldenrod and at the turkey vultures wheeling overhead and coasting along the ridgetop. I also show her how to squeeze the blossoms of butter-and-eggs to make them talk.
Our spreading wingstem patch
Later, I take a walk by myself to admire the towering and spreading wingstem over the old covered farm dump. Its branchless, wing-shaped stem, which can reach as high as 13 feet, accounts for its name wingstem. This moist site is the only place it grows on our property and, according to one range map I looked at, we are at its northern edge. It is much more common farther south and west. It’s also called yellow ironweed because, like ironweed, it is tall, likes moist conditions and has similar lance-shaped leaves. But wingstem leaves are alternate, hence its species name alternifolia, meaning alternate leaf. Because they are bitter-tasting, herbivores such as deer and rabbits usually don’t eat them. That may be why wingstem lines West Virginia country roads during August, as we discovered the same August wingstem showed up on our property for the first time.
At the top of its stem are sprays of golden flowers. Each flower has 2 to 10 yellow ray florets that droop down and surround prominent and numerous greenish-yellow disk florets visited mostly by long-tongued bees, especially bumblebees. Caterpillars of silvery checkerspot butterflies relish the bitter foliage.
While I always know where to find wingstem, nodding ladies’-tresses move around like other members of the Orchid family. I first discovered 15 plants years ago at the edge of Far Field, but then the deer found them. By the time we fenced them, only a few remained. The following year I discovered a few farther out in the field and none inside the fence. Then two years ago one appeared inside the fence. In the meantime, I literally stumbled on a small patch at the base of the spruce grove in First Field. That patch too has moved around, and last September I found only one plant.
Nodding Ladies Tresses (Spiranthes cernua) by Magnolia1000 (Creative Commons Attribution license)
Nodding ladies’-tresses (Spiranthes cernua) are not showy flowers. As many as 60 small, bell-shaped, white flowers grow on a hairy spike in two to three tightly twisted spirals above grass-like leaves at its base. An early successional species, it prefers disturbed areas that are open, wet to dry, and often sandy. Its species name means “nodding,” which refers to its slightly nodding flowers. Ladies’-tresses was so-named because the stalk of flowers reminded earlier observers of a woman’s braided hair. Altogether there are 32 species in the genera Spiranthes. Nodding ladies’-tresses grow in most of eastern and midwestern United States and Canada except for Florida, Newfoundland and Labrador.
I say goodbye to many other wildflowers too including the aptly named turtlehead, as I point out to Elanor during a stream walk, ranks of lemon-scented horse balm, white wood asters, and even pearly everlasting, which does not quite live up to its name, although it does make a nice addition to a dried winter bouquet.
During September I also spend many hours at the top of First Field, sitting on Alan’s Bench and watching migrating monarch butterflies. One morning I was there by 9:00. Fog filled the valleys, but sun illuminated our 37 acres of goldenrod and asters. The first monarch sailed high overhead in the morning breeze, the second swooped low over the field, and the third fluttered across the trail. Then a fourth did what they all do eventually, It flew straight up from the goldenrod, over the bench and spruce grove, and on down the ridge heading south.
First Field is butterfly central. One warm, breezy day, in addition to monarchs, pearl crescents, orange sulphurs, cabbage whites, summer azures, meadow fritillaries and my favorites, the tropical-looking tiger swallowtails, nectared on the bonanza of asters and goldenrods. Numerous monarchs fluttered up from the field, some almost too high to see, coursed back and forth for a few seconds as if trying to catch a wave, and then sailed over the spruce grove.
On that day I did not see the dozens and dozens of monarchs that our son Dave had reported previously. But I was pleased that they seemed to be recovering from their disastrous all-time low in 2009-10 when the area of Mexico where eastern North American monarchs spend their winters reported the lowest numbers ever, according to Lincoln Brower, who has been studying monarchs for decades. Not only are monarchs threatened by illegal logging in their Mexican wintering habitat, but by land development and herbicide use where they breed in the summer. Dr. Brower wonders if the monarchs’ migratory phenomenon will survive.
Migrating monarch in First Field
But Mexican poet and novelist Homero Aridjis, who led the effort to persuade Mexico’s president to create the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve that hosts most of the monarchs from the United States and Canada east of the Rockies, is determined that it will survive. Calling it the “environmental cause of my life,” he remembers as a boy climbing up into the hills of his native Michoacan State and seeing the monarchs “explode from the tree branches when the sun hit them.” And I remember, not so long ago, seeing a few of the deciduous trees on Sapsucker Ridge fluttering with monarchs on a windy September day.
Almost everyone can appreciate the beauty and grace of butterflies and the showier moths, but they aren’t as fond of the caterpillars from which they develop. One September afternoon, as I crossed First Field, I noticed an incredible infestation of caterpillars on one of our largest catalpa trees. The caterpillars were black with yellow bellies and a thin yellow stripe on their sides. A long, straight, black horn projected from its rear. Nothing was left of the tree leaves but stems. Catalpa sphinx moth caterpillars (Ceratomia catalpae) had caused the defoliation.
A member of the Sphingidae family, they are known collectively as hornworms because most have a horn, eyespot, or hardened button at A8 or abdominal segment 8 (out of 10) in entomological terms. They metamorphize into undistinguishable brownish gray moths, although some sphinx or hawk moths, as they are also called, are more attractive such as the Abbot’s and Nessus sphinx moths that nectar on our lilacs in spring and the day-flying hummingbird clearwings that hover like hummingbirds to drink flower nectar from a variety of plants.
Catalpa sphynx moth caterpillar in one of the First Field catalpas
But the caterpillars of the catalpa sphinx moth only feed on catalpa leaves. As a boom and bust species, it is “occasionally common enough to defoliate catalpa trees,” David L. Wagner writes in his Caterpillars of Eastern North America. “Females raft the eggs, sometimes laying several hundred in a single cluster… The catalpa sphinx is a ‘barfer’ and thrasher. When molested, the larva regurgitates a somewhat viscous green fluid from the foregut and thrashes violently.” When I touched a branch, the caterpillars leaped into the grass.
Although we have a couple dozen catalpa trees in First Field, only a few had been attacked by the catalpa sphinx moth caterpillars. And that was the first time in 38 years that I’d seen an infestation. Two weeks later, Dave found a parasitized catalpa sphinx moth caterpillar covered with white wasp cocoons. At least that caterpillar would suffer the fate that many do — being slowly eaten alive by developing braconid wasps.
But as September progresses, the forest understory changes color. First the black gum trees turn red, pink, and purple. Then black birches, witch hazel, and striped maples form golden bowers as I walk my trails. Ash trees at the back of our house turn bronzy red and gold. Our yard black walnut tree leaves have not only turned yellow, but many have already fallen and litter our veranda and front porch. Only when I walk to the top of First Field for a view of the mountains do I see still green forests.
Reluctantly, I say goodbye to all of that — visitors from the tropics, wildflowers, butterflies, moths, and green forests — until next spring.
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All photos by Dave Bonta except where indicated. Click on the photos to see larger versions at Flickr.
Marcia with golden eagle (photo by Todd Katzner)
Marcia Bonta is the author of nine books and over 300 magazine articles. The blog portion of this website includes her popular “Naturalist’s Eye” column from Pennsylvania Game News, reprinted here on the 1st of each month. Unlike typical blog entries, these columns are written months in advance, usually about things that happened during the previous year. Read more…
