The riot of autumn color has faded to brown, winter’s snow not yet here. For many, “stick season” is the dreariest season of all – perhaps this year more than most, as the holiday traditions that usually bring light to these gray days must of necessity be smaller, quieter, or canceled altogether.
This time of year, the bones of the land are laid bare. Bird nests, carefully constructed amidst concealing foliage in the spring and early summer, come into view for the first time. The trunks of trees, shaped by long-forgotten storms or ravening insects, reveal their true forms. Stone walls and cellar holes emerge, signposts of a landscape that was once more field than forest. The other day, standing at the edge of a dirt road in Hancock, my husband and I traced a network of stone walls for a full quarter-mile up and along a nearby wooded slope; we’d walked that same road a couple months earlier and barely noticed the stones beneath the flush of green.
Walking in the thin light of a late autumn afternoon, I envision life quieting around me in preparation for winter. Snakes slinking into crevices, and turtles resting on pond bottoms. Trees channeling energy into their roots. Chipmunks retreating into subterranean chambers and sinking into torpor, rousing every so often to nibble on a nut from their well-stocked larder. Mourning cloak butterflies shuffling beneath loose bark. The Great Settling.
Can we root down too, taking shelter in the stillness?
If you find yourself hungry for color amid a landscape that looks like it’s been sketched in grayscale, take heart: you need only head to your nearest wetland edge and scan for winterberry (Ilex verticilatta). Though the brilliant red fruits of this native shrub mature in late summer and early fall, they’re much more visible now that the leaves have gone. As their name suggests, winterberries persist well into the cold months, providing a cheery pop of color for us humans and a food source for robins, bluebirds, woodpeckers, and waxwings long after most other fruits have disappeared.
Another colorful stick season treat: Blue Jays, whose vivid hues offer a striking contrast to now-beige backyards and woodland edges. Though Blue Jays are year-round residents of the Monadnock Region, their numbers swell in fall and winter with migrants from the north. Blue Jay migration is not well understood, but it’s thought to be tied at least in part to food availability. As you’ve likely noticed, acorns (“nature’s ball bearings”) are in abundance this fall, which is a boon for boisterous Blue Jays and many other forest dwellers.
Male Evening Grosbeaks, large finches with gold bodies and bright yellow “eyebrows,” should also soon bring a welcome spot of sunshine to backyard bird feeders. In any given year, boreal finches might stay in the north for the winter, or they might migrate south in a sporadic migration known as an “irruption.” As with Blue Jays, finch irruption is a consequence of food availability: if northern spruce, pine, birch, and other tree species produce bumper crops of seeds, there’s no need for the seed-eating birds to leave the boreal forest. If cone crops are poor, finches will wander south in search of sustenance. This year, the Winter Finch Forecast (finchnetwork.org), which bases its prognostications on the abundance of native seed crops in Alaska, Canada, and the northern United States, predicts a good season for Pine Siskins, Purple Finches, Common Redpolls, and Evening Grosbeaks in our neck of the woods.
Our leafless landscape may feel desolate at first glance, but – as ever with the natural world – there’s beauty to be found in the woods and fields and waters, even during stick season. You just gotta poke around.
Brett Amy Thelen is Science Director at the Harris Center for Conservation Education.