Halloween is almost here and I’ve just come down with a terrific cold. I can’t stop coughing and sneezing. After I blow my nose, I just have to do lean forward and it starts dripping all over again, just like a tap. Oh, well. Lots of rest, camphor and eucalyptus oil, cold pills, lemon and honey for the sore throat. Hopefully it’s gone soon, because I do love Halloween candy and you can’t eat candy when you have a cold, right?
We have had an extremely dry summer. There is an area called the flats below our house that fills with water in the fall and hosts a ton of ducks, geese, seagulls and trumpeter swans each winter—not to mention the predators like red-tail hawks, bald eagles, owls, turkey vultures that prey on them. The swans arrive between November 1st and 4th, almost as if they have calendars tied around their necks. These swans are listed in the bird books as having a low-pitched bugle with a single note. But having heard them on the flats for the last many years, I know they have a two-toned call.
This year, there’s no water down there. The creek that feeds the flats dried up in July and only last week started to show a bit of wet at the bottom of the channel. What will the birds do with no water?
Well, today it started to rain, a torrent that continued to come down all afternoon, turning to sleet tonight. I guess the birds will be fine. What does fall look like where you are?
