― Rainer Maria Rilke
The Autumn Equinox is Tuesday, but this weekend was my final summer outing. Dottie Johnson and I scoured the trails on Saturday and found 15 warbler species at the creek corridor, including a Cape May. We also observed our first Yellow-rumped Warblers and Ruby-crowned Kinglets of fall migration. I was a little surprised to find a couple of Pine Siskins, but other birders have reported them just a little ways north of Dane County. Perhaps there will be a substantial finch irruption this winter. Anyway, not that I'm a numbers kind of birder, the siskin put me at 220 avian species for the year ― about average for an average effort.
White-throated Sparrow
White-throated Sparrows are beginning to fill the woods and prairies ― I could hear their enlivened alert calls and fragmented Sam Peabody songs as I hiked the corridor trail. Some of these sparrows will stay the duration of winter, while most will journey further south. Speaking of that, I'm not really sure how much effort I'm going to put into my forthcoming autumn and winter excursions, so this might be my final blog post of 2020. If I find something super-cool and photograph it, I'll likely publish it here.
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
There's just one day left of summer. Neither is the year over, but this has been an extremely bizarre one and an important moment for humankind. Just as spring put winter to rest, the full-force of the pandemic and all the anthro-craziness came along with it. In most respects for me there was little difference on account of my somewhat hermitic lifestyle ― many spring and summer outings were some of the best I've ever experienced. For one, there was the 37 spring warblers, plus the awesomely fantastic tiger beetle season. These will be two very cool memories I'm sure I'll reflect upon over cold winter days and nights ahead.
But at long last the madness of our culture and society has come full circle ― it's as if by way of the Internet and other media we've held up a mirror to ourselves and become infected by its reflection. For too many people their attractions are contagious. Oh, the sunsets have been beautiful lately, but how they got to be that way repulses me from wanting to photographing them. There's just too much anti-science nuttiness out there and it'll be a miracle if our species makes it another 100 years. Indeed, there are far worse things than a nasty virus ... and for the most part we're doing nothing about it apart from typing.
Truth? Here's a little bit of truth for you: After each great extinction that has occurred in Earth's history ― where as much as 80 to 90 percent of biodiversity was lost ― it took the natural forces of biological evolution only 5 to 10 million years to replenish the depletion (with new and interesting lifeforms). Given the Earth probably has another 2 to 3 billion years in which life can be sustained on it, what we’re seeing right now is a mere anthropological blip in Deep Time. Perhaps our species will be long gone, but Nature will endure.
And my imagination runs wild at the very thought!
All images © 2020 Mike McDowell