We're in the transition stage between fall and winter, still enjoying wonderful mid-autumn weather, plenty of sunshine and breezy days warming up to the mid-teens. In the forest, signs of fall are everywhere, from the absorption into the forest floor of low-growing plant life, to the carmine blaze of staghorn sumac foliage. For the most part, the deciduous trees have just begun to succumb to yearly colour change, late this year.

We always speculate how much of that change is attributable to shorter daylight hours and how much to temperature flirtations with overnight frost; likely a combination of both, since it's the cold that convinces trees that survival is in their favour when they allow their life-affirming sap to descend, causing foliage to turn colour, detach and fall.

Now, when we're in the ravine, we can see the gradual accumulation of desiccated leaves on the trails, and when there's a stiff wind that gusts, a flurry of leaves lazily descend to the ground, a ritual as old as time and nature itself.

It had seemed to us this year that there have been fewer squirrels about noticeably than we've been accustomed to throughout the summer months. I've certainly far less frequently been placing out peanuts for them. But now that colder weather is approaching they're making themselves far more up front in their browsing search for edibles to put away for winter.

Now, we see small groups of robins in the ravine, preparatory to their migratory flight, although for the past several years more robins are beginning to eschew flight south. It's a conundrum what they find to eat throughout the winter months to sustain them until spring; certainly not worms.

We stop to look heavenward through the still-leafy canopy whenever we hear a racket of geese calling as they form their precise arrows southward, from time to time. It's evocative of so many falls, bringing back memories that are both welcome and melancholy.