CHANGES

.....it's the beginning of Autumn, the season of DRASTIC change.

In spite of what the human-designated date for "the first day of Autumn", or "Fall Starts Here", the Earth, the birds, the animals, the plants....they all know, and are showing us that truth. The leaves have started their earthward drifting colour change, the grasses have slowed their growing, teenager deer no longer want to be seen hovering behind their mothers, chipmunks, marmots, field mice, foxes, coyotes, even the couple pairs of wolves that live around here....are all preparing their winter nests and dens, the season's offspring well and truly on their own now; either kicked out to make nests of their own, or cooperate in the pack activities of preparation for the cold time ahead.

      For me, the first sign of Autumn is usually the Starling Thing.The Great Flocks are beginning to collect. The many icterids,(starlings, blackbirds,grackles), that gather into these VASTLY numerous flocks of mixed species are stopping their isolated pair-bonded life style and returning to the cacophonous, clatterychattery, wind-blown, almost-like-a-school-of-fish society behaviour.
   
 It's glorious to sit out near the very tall trees where they gather, watch them coming in by ones and twos and threes, at first loosely perched about these trees, as more arrive becoming a tightly clustered black mass of  noise; whistling, screeing, chattering and clicking, sometimes a bit of a tune they've picked up from some human habit.....suddenly, AS ONE, they go dead silent...there's a pause....and then, AS ONE, they LAUNCH themselves into the air with an audible roaring of the hundreds, even thousands of wings carrying this mass into the sky.  There's an excitement to being present for that launch....it's beautiful to listen to the chatter leading up to that moment of perfect stillness, it's hopeful to stay seated, waiting to see whether that swirl of black bird bodies will merely circle, to return to the tree and attain a better seating arrangement, or stream off across the sky and fields in search of some other activity on which they've apparently voted to pursue next in their day.

I'm sure you've seen them,(or perhaps you haven't because you don't look up for this sort of thing), the thousands-bird RIVERS  stretching out for a mile or more overhead, swirling, diving, swooping.... when I see one of these bird-rivers approaching overhead, I stop, wait, count the minutes.... it's sort of like the tangible proof of the river of time pouring toward me, bringing on the Autumn, the Fall...that has no concern for the dates on our calendars, nor steps aside it's flow for the sake of some small generosity toward this puny being called "Me".