NASHVILLE — From inside my air-conditioned house, the light through my windows looks the way October light is supposed to look — mild, quiet, entirely unlike the thin light of winter or the sparkling light of spring or the unrelenting light of summer. In normal years, October is a month for open windows in Middle Tennessee. For cool, damp mornings. For colored leaves that quake in the wind before letting go and lifting away. For afternoon shadows so lovely they fill me with a longing I can’t even name.
Relief is on the way, the forecast tells us, but all we have had of autumn so far is the right slant of light, for this year the mild October light has not brought the usual mild temperatures. All over the Southeast, and much of the Midwest, October came in like August, breaking heat records. For all of September it was August in the South, and for all the first week of October, too — severe drought, temperatures near 100 degrees day after day.
My own yard is as drought-tolerant as I can make it, planted with native trees and shrubs that evolved for this growing zone. Hardly a blade of water-craving grass is left in what passes for a lawn here; to my delight, self-seeding wildflowers have gradually crowded out the grass over the years. But the wild ground cover is so dry now that it crackles when I walk on it, and little puffs of dust lift from the parched soil with my every step.
The once-fragrant piles of damp earth that moles turn up in the night are as dry as anthills, and the robins that like to pick through their leavings in the morning seem to have given up all hope of worms. I finally went to the hardware store to buy a sprinkler, partly to save the new berry-bearing trees and shrubs I planted last spring for the songbird migration, and partly because I take so much pleasure from watching all the neighborhood robins darting through the edges of the spray, catching insects desperate for moisture. I know their dance is nothing more than survival, but to me it looks exactly like joy.
Turning leaves are ordinarily the loveliest part of this lovely month, but this year the leaves are still green — drooping but green — and the few that have already fallen are dry and brown. The September rains they needed for October color never materialized. Here in Middle Tennessee, September 2019 was the driest on record: Somewhere in this region someone got .02 inches of rain last month, I hear, but at our house we got none.
And yet the light is nevertheless October light, and light is one of the seasonal triggers that tells migratory birds when it’s time to move on. According to the indispensable website of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, more than 650 species of birds nest in North America, and more than half of those species migrate.
These days I stand at the window every chance I get to watch the last of the ruby-throated hummingbirds drinking from the feeders I’ve set out to compensate for the loss of wildflowers during a drought year. The ruby-throat migration is well underway now, never mind the persistent summer temperatures, and these are not the same birds that nested in my yard earlier in the summer. Those birds long ago abandoned their efforts to keep my feeders for themselves and departed for their wintering grounds in Central America. I hope some of them have made it safely across the Gulf of Mexico by now.
The birds I’m watching through my window are merely stopping by on their own journey from nesting grounds much further north. They too will be gone before long. It’s a predictable rite of autumn, more regular, now, than rain. In years past the last hummingbird arrived in my yard during the second week of October, and there is no reason to believe that this year will be any different. The weather is unpredictable and the climate is radically changing, but the light of October is still quiet and mild. And these iridescent avian jewels still take their cue from it, just as they always have.
In August the resident hummingbird wars are fierce, so violent that I’ve seen one bird knock another to the ground. The travelers are much less inclined to quarrel, too tired or too intent on conserving energy to engage in battle. They rest, one at a time, on the feeder’s perch and drink and drink and drink. Then they lift into the air, weightless, immune to the pull of gravity, and take cover again in the still-green leaves of a nearby tree. One day they will leave and be gone for good. But no matter how long I stand at the window and watch, I will never know which time will be the very last.
Margaret Renkl is a contributing opinion writer who covers flora, fauna, politics and culture in the American South. She is the author of the book “Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss.”
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
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Home » Analysis & Comment » Opinion | The Last Hummingbird
Opinion | The Last Hummingbird
NASHVILLE — From inside my air-conditioned house, the light through my windows looks the way October light is supposed to look — mild, quiet, entirely unlike the thin light of winter or the sparkling light of spring or the unrelenting light of summer. In normal years, October is a month for open windows in Middle Tennessee. For cool, damp mornings. For colored leaves that quake in the wind before letting go and lifting away. For afternoon shadows so lovely they fill me with a longing I can’t even name.
Relief is on the way, the forecast tells us, but all we have had of autumn so far is the right slant of light, for this year the mild October light has not brought the usual mild temperatures. All over the Southeast, and much of the Midwest, October came in like August, breaking heat records. For all of September it was August in the South, and for all the first week of October, too — severe drought, temperatures near 100 degrees day after day.
My own yard is as drought-tolerant as I can make it, planted with native trees and shrubs that evolved for this growing zone. Hardly a blade of water-craving grass is left in what passes for a lawn here; to my delight, self-seeding wildflowers have gradually crowded out the grass over the years. But the wild ground cover is so dry now that it crackles when I walk on it, and little puffs of dust lift from the parched soil with my every step.
The once-fragrant piles of damp earth that moles turn up in the night are as dry as anthills, and the robins that like to pick through their leavings in the morning seem to have given up all hope of worms. I finally went to the hardware store to buy a sprinkler, partly to save the new berry-bearing trees and shrubs I planted last spring for the songbird migration, and partly because I take so much pleasure from watching all the neighborhood robins darting through the edges of the spray, catching insects desperate for moisture. I know their dance is nothing more than survival, but to me it looks exactly like joy.
Turning leaves are ordinarily the loveliest part of this lovely month, but this year the leaves are still green — drooping but green — and the few that have already fallen are dry and brown. The September rains they needed for October color never materialized. Here in Middle Tennessee, September 2019 was the driest on record: Somewhere in this region someone got .02 inches of rain last month, I hear, but at our house we got none.
And yet the light is nevertheless October light, and light is one of the seasonal triggers that tells migratory birds when it’s time to move on. According to the indispensable website of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, more than 650 species of birds nest in North America, and more than half of those species migrate.
These days I stand at the window every chance I get to watch the last of the ruby-throated hummingbirds drinking from the feeders I’ve set out to compensate for the loss of wildflowers during a drought year. The ruby-throat migration is well underway now, never mind the persistent summer temperatures, and these are not the same birds that nested in my yard earlier in the summer. Those birds long ago abandoned their efforts to keep my feeders for themselves and departed for their wintering grounds in Central America. I hope some of them have made it safely across the Gulf of Mexico by now.
The birds I’m watching through my window are merely stopping by on their own journey from nesting grounds much further north. They too will be gone before long. It’s a predictable rite of autumn, more regular, now, than rain. In years past the last hummingbird arrived in my yard during the second week of October, and there is no reason to believe that this year will be any different. The weather is unpredictable and the climate is radically changing, but the light of October is still quiet and mild. And these iridescent avian jewels still take their cue from it, just as they always have.
In August the resident hummingbird wars are fierce, so violent that I’ve seen one bird knock another to the ground. The travelers are much less inclined to quarrel, too tired or too intent on conserving energy to engage in battle. They rest, one at a time, on the feeder’s perch and drink and drink and drink. Then they lift into the air, weightless, immune to the pull of gravity, and take cover again in the still-green leaves of a nearby tree. One day they will leave and be gone for good. But no matter how long I stand at the window and watch, I will never know which time will be the very last.
Margaret Renkl is a contributing opinion writer who covers flora, fauna, politics and culture in the American South. She is the author of the book “Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss.”
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
Source: Read Full Article