A Look at the Season's Main Events
By Virginia Barlow
November
Unseasonably warm, moist weather will stimulate peepers to sing from woods and fields, sometimes far from ponds, before they go belowground for the winter / A cattail flowerhead has tiny seeds and is mostly fluff. Now used by mice for insulation, in spring it will be used to line bird nests / Ash and birch seeds stay on the trees well into winter, providing food for finches / When beechnuts and acorns are scarce, bears will search for food over a wide area
Rattlesnake plantain (really an orchid) stays green all winter. The leaves are covered with a net of white veins and grow in a small rosette / Chipmunks will keep coming out if it is warm / Great blue herons are often seen this late in the year, but these stragglers will soon be gone / The entire population of greater snow geese, about 250,000 birds, migrates south between the Hudson and the Connecticut River / Aspen buds are a favorite food of ruffed grouse
Nov 18: peak of Leonids. This meteor shower is best known for its 33-year peaks, the last of which occurred in 2001 / Frail, light tan Bruce spanworm moths, also called Hunter’s moths, may be abundant in sugar maple stands on sunny days from mid October through November / The white midribs of the leaves and the bright red berries of partridgeberry both contribute to the good cheer spread by this ground-hugging plant / Snow geese may still be passing through
Healthy bear cubs now weigh at least 75 pounds and will soon follow their mothers into winter dens / In cold weather, carpenter ants cluster together in the center of their nest and are helplessly sluggish / Luna moth cocoons, wrapped in leaves, have fallen to the ground / Twinflower fruits are eaten by ruffed grouse and other birds that feed on the ground / Autumn overturn is completed in lakes as the water temperature reaches a uniform 4°C (39.4°F)
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These listing are from observations and reports in our home territory at about 1,000 feet in elevation in central Vermont and are approximate. Events may occur earlier or later, depending on you latitude, elevation - and the weather.
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© 2007 by the author; this article may not be copied or reproduced without the author's consent.
