October 28: fog

This was a delayed post from Thursday, October 28 .

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There's been a lot of fog this week. It came in with the warm weather from the south and it has been so thick that the other side of Weesuck Creek has been completely invisible. This morning the fog finally lifted over the creek and brought out the sun and the vivid colors of Pine Neck. The sudden change in weather pulled me out of the house and down the path to the water where I put up a American Woodcock -- not once but twice. It was the best bird of the week!

I reached the water in time to see some fishing Ospreys and to watch a couple of Common Grackle blitzes, brief and noisy, with hundreds of birds dropping to pay us a visit. The Grackles (there were some Starlings mixed in but it was mostly just Grackles) seem to move in a chaotic fashion but in fact they have their own systematic organization. The first scouts land and spread out over open areas and then gradually move into the woods. In the meanwhile, new arrivals come winging in, always leap-frogging over the grackles already on the ground and taking over the territory next door. Eventually, the whole flock turns over in this fashion or just takes off to look for another likely area to blitz.

Although the fog lifted over the creek, it remained stalled over the bay and Dune Road, usually quite visible, was simply not there. The change in weather has put a dead stop to migration (the odd Woodcock excepted); the hordes of Yellow-rumps and the various sparrows have as good as disappeared leaving only a few isolated individuals of each species. One bird that was not stopped by the change in weather was the American Robin with small groups flying over in no particular direction right into the peasoup; it's easy to tell when the Robins are on the move because they have very recognizable flight calls which presumably help to keep them together. If you hear a series of mysterious little 'sss' sounds coming from the skies, it's probably Robins on the move. One bird that warm weather brought back was the Royal Tern, also recognizable by its calls reverberating through the mist. Other birds that can be identified by sound are the two kinglets (but you have to be able to hear high frequencies to recognize the Golden-crowns) and the American Goldfinches which are still here in numbers.

The stormy weather that punctuated the fogs this week brought down tree branches and a lot of leaves but enough remain to make a colorful display. We don't have the sugar maples that make New England autumns so colorful but the Red Maple and Red Oaks take on a lot of color along with various shrubs and vines. Poison Ivy makes a particuarly beautiful display even more beautiful than its companion, the harmless Virginia Creeper. The Tupelos also show a lot of color but they color out early and are mostly stripped of their leaves by now. The whole effect of fog, wind, water and autumn color (plus white egrets and Great Blue Herons) makes a magnificent show, evoking traditional Chinese or Japanese landscape art.

Eric Salzman