September. Turning the calendar page, August to September, marks perhaps the biggest change of all the months. Back to school and back to work. The pace quickens. Committees meet.
From heat and humidity, the air freshens. Swamp maples are turning. Days grow shorter as the sun rises later and sets earlier than the long days of summer.
Shifting light levels trigger just about everything in the natural world, including migration.
The next Backyard Birder column is Sept. 15, peak time for broad-winged hawk migration — arguably the greatest natural show hereabouts.
I write about it each year, eager that others will be at the right place at the right time to be a witness.
The right place can be anywhere with a decent view of sky. The right time is a sunny, warm day in mid-September, perhaps after a storm front has passed. The migratory urge is strong for broad-winged hawks, and they’ll burst forth when the sun returns.
They’re not strong fliers. Couch potatoes of a sort, they “hunt” from a forest perch, dropping down for a rodent, reptile or insect meal.
They’ve evolved to hitch rides on air currents, actual columns of warm air rising as sun warms earth. Well named, they spread their broad wings to circle higher and higher, then coast south for another ride high — all the way to Central and South America.
On a few big flight days, broadwings sharing thermal lift can reach the hundreds. Followed by another group and then another.
For many people, the right place to be in mid-September is New Hampshire Audubon’s hawkwatch on Pack Monadnock. From that elevation, I love to watch a group or “kettle” form in the valley below, circling slow and wide, rising finally above the dark horizon line to a bright sky backdrop.
Someone at the watch might announce, “They’re streaming,” meaning the uppermost broadwing has reached maximum lift and has set wings to coast south to the next ride high.
They’re countable then, as they stream out. What might appear to be swirling chaos becomes orderly — and countable. Audubon’s hawkwatch staffer is a skilled counter, and in mid-September has a lot of help. Hawkwatch visitors include newcomers, always welcomed by the old hands who experience great vicarious pleasure introducing newcomers to one of nature’s most compelling shows.
Pokemon Go move over.
I’ve been thinking about the Pokemon craze, and wrote about it a month ago, comparing the pleasure discovering nature’s intimate wonders to the pleasure as cartoon Pokemon characters appear on a cellphone screen.
I’ve been wishing more people knew about the former.
I thought about it when I found a new wildflower last week. A patch of pink caught my eye, low among roadside grasses where a slight depression offered wetter conditions. From each flower’s pink-petal center, eight ridiculously long yellow stamens seemingly exploded forth. There was nothing subtle about this wildflower, easy to find in my Peterson wildflower guide: Virginia meadow beauty.
I felt that surely I was among the few ever to find this wild beauty as all my wanderings had never come across it before. Bright pink and yellow are hard to miss.
The first monarch butterfly in our backyard was another Pokemon Go moment. Hopeful reports suggest this is a rebound year for monarchs after a steep plummet in their numbers that has the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service debating endangered species status.
Fish and Wildlife has also embarked on creating a corridor of milkweed habitat stretching from Texas north to Minnesota. The Midwest is where “our” monarchs start heading this way.
The Fremont Field conservation land in Peterborough has bountiful milkweed and a good number of monarch caterpillars this year. I manage the field for wildlife, and that includes insect pollinators. Milkweed and goldenrod are pollinator magnets for nectar and pollen as well as for monarch caterpillars. Milkweed leaves are the only food monarch caterpillars eat. No milkweed; no monarchs.
Eggs laid now will hatch what’s called the “supergeneration” that migrates to the species’ winter home in the mountains of Mexico. They’ll stir in spring and head north to the first milkweed encountered in Texas where females lay their eggs. The next generation continues the next leg of their long journey north.
Another Pokemon discovery involved caterpillars and the Harris Center’s new pollinator garden. I was part of the team that planned and planted it, and learned a lot about pollinators in the process.
Team member Jean Govatos reported six black swallowtail butterfly caterpillars on dill we planted in the garden just for them. Visit the garden, sit down next to the dill, and watch them chomp away. One is the most I’ve ever seen on our garden dill.
Just as monarchs seek milkweeds, black swallowtails seek dill and other members of the carrot family. Jean placed a few sticks nearby for the caterpillars when they transform into chrysalises.
We also planted violets in the garden, favored food for fritillary butterflies.
The garden, abuzz and abloom, is worth a visit.
Out the window now, three feet away, a young common yellowthroat warbler gleans the butterfly bush closest to my writing desk. Somehow, year after year, the young know to work the butterfly bushes just outside our windows.
The other night, Carl said “Guess who’s here” with a nod out the window.
I knew.
In my next column, Sept. 15, I’ll have an update on the broad-winged hawk migration. There might be some decent flight days before then. Sept. 11 was the big day one year, a week earlier than usual. You never know.
Meade Cadot and I will host a field trip there on the 18th, the usual primetime, but hawkwatch staffer Katrina Fenton is there daily from today thru mid-November, spelled on Mondays by Iain MacLeod and Tuesdays by Henry Walters.
Good company and good eyes all.
Backyard Birder by Francie Von Mertens appears every other week in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript./