Fewer daylight hours are now obvious; dusk begins to fall much sooner and before we know it, we have been deprived of a full hour of daylight. The sun is setting at a lower angle in the evening and the atmosphere offers us some spectacular sunsets, a specialty of this time of year.
My husband has noted that the song sparrows that have spent most of their summer nearby, have now gone. Early migration resulting from impending seasonal changes we're hardly aware of compels migration. Chipping sparrows have returned to replace the song sparrows.
A magnificent, full-canopied maple at the top of the street, by far the most beautiful maple around the vicinity, has incrementally and surprisingly early begun to take on its fall mantle. We ascribed the early change - more than a month earlier than should occur - to the effects of the drought. Lower branches of the tree turned a muted red, and the colour just kept creeping up to the top branches as day by day, that tall and imposing tree is turning toward fall. On our trip last weekend to Merrickville we saw immense-trunked, venerable maples compared to which this one is a mere stripling, and none of them had shown any signs of seasonal change, yet.
In the ravine now, we come across brightly coloured, fallen foliage. It never fails to surprise us, so early in the season. We also saw the first of the white baneberries, nowhere near as plentiful as last year; even their red cousins have been scarce. The wild apple trees in the ravine are not bearing the copious burden of fruit they most often do, and the blackberries are now just about gone; none more to pick.
We are increasingly seeing the presence of pop-up fungi, mushrooms that are nowhere to be seen one day, then present in mature form the next. We've another three weeks before fall officially arrives in its early stages, but it seems to be pushing hard for early entry, this year, even if it isn't yet reflected in the ambient temperatures.
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