Val Cunningham

Fall is a magical season. It’s a season of abundance, even while we feel winter breathing down our necks. There are more birds in the world after summer’s busy nesting season, butterflies are busy living out their brief but beautiful lives, and many mammals are busy stashing away food to tide them over during winter.

High tech is coming to the world of bird feeding, with cameras that automatically snap photos of bird feeder visitors. I had to laugh when I first saw Tim Szymanski’s photo of a young screech owl that stopped by one evening to see if there was anything for owls in such a feeder.

Birds lack sweat glands, so they use several other physiological strategies to cool down in hot weather – note how the osprey in Darlene Herbster’s photo is panting to shed body heat.

What does it mean when a handsome male cardinal lands on a backyard sundial?
To Michael Rix, who snapped this fun photo, it suggests that the cardinal is thinking “Time to eat.”

Young creatures are breaking out of eggs, popping out of dens, or heading to water. For Steve Boe, this season of renewal meant encountering a curious young fox who kept an eye on him walking around a lake. Its siblings and parents were probably not far away.

Jerry Davis was driving on a service road through a large wetland when he noticed a sandhill crane turning its eggs on the nest. Sandhills share incubation duties during the day as one parent goes off to nearby fields to feed while the other tends the nest for about two hours, then they change shifts. However, it’s the female who sits on the nest all night.

Scott Thiede has been keeping an eye on the fox den in his urban neighborhood, and recently caught a parent watching over one of its six kits. The little one was gnawing on a piece of chicken, apparently tossed out by a neighbor who raises poultry. Thiede has posted a fun video plus stills showing the progress of the fox family on his Facebook page.