Fall is a nostalgic time of year. Tinged with a kind of pensiveness. The smells, textures and colours evoke memories of earlier falls that we have experienced. Recalling to memory events that occurred many years ago, impressed deeply within us and recalled at the repeat performance of nature in her transit from warm, languid days of summer toward cooler days and nights.

Now, the nighttime garden stroll has a different fragrance and atmosphere. And if we stop to listen on an overcast night when the wind has abated from daytime events and all seems still, you can hear cheeps and chirrups here and there. As migrating songbirds begin their long flight to southern climes, calling out to one another, depriving us throughout the long winter months of their presence and their lovely symphonies of sound.

Clear nights where it is velvety-dark but the stars are seen twinkling above and the full moon reveals its presence, there are no such sounds. Flight is automatically cancelled, it appears, since clear nights provide predators with the opportunity to pick off the little warblers' flight plans, one by one.

During the day and early evenings is when we hear the geese calling high above and see their formation of flight against the sky. And their calls to one another, encouraging, urging discipline, remind us of each year we have witnessed the ancient phenomena when nature's creatures prepare for the atmospheric alteration that compels them to take flight, to migrate on a route they seem to be born familiar with.