Turkey Time

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day in the United States, a day when our family traditionally gobbles up a turkey.

Turkeys are native to North America and were domesticated by Native Americans in Mexico prior to the arrival of the first European explorers. The name “turkey” was apparently given to African guinea-fowl that were imported to Europe by way of the country of Turkey and called turkeys. When the domesticated birds we call turkeys arrived in Europe the name was applied to them. Just a bit confusing.

Wild turkeys are widespread in most of the U.S. and Mexico where, depending on the season, they feed on nuts, fruits and insects .

Although somewhat ungainly, wild turkeys are, in their own way, beautiful birds –

In addition to gobbling a meal of turkey and its accompaniments on Thanksgiving Day we will, more importantly, be grateful for family, friends and the beauty of the natural world.

Oops

We’d gone to our daughter’s place to have lunch with her and visit for a while. Out in the yard a gray squirrel with only a half a tail was running around under the trees –

But it wasn’t just the squirrel that was of interest, the trees and shrubs in the yard were full of birds, some residents and some migrants. Cedar waxwings were everywhere in the tops of the trees, but never came low enough for photos.

There were three species of woodpeckers: red-bellied, downy and yellow-bellied sapsucker –

Plus a female/juvenile purple finch –

And a couple of ruby-crowned kinglets –

Because the light was terrible – dark gray sky plus many of the birds were in the shade – most of the photos weren't good. However, several yellow-rumped warblers did present good opportunities for photos – 

Interestingly, one of those warblers found a meal in a spider web –

Whether the meal was a spider or an insect the spider had wrapped in silk can't be determined, it merely looks like a small white blob in front of the bird until in the last photo it appears as something dark in the bird's beak.

Less than a minute later it found something else in another spider web, stretched forward to grasp it – and apparently lost its balance –

And then looked around as if to say “You didn’t see that.”

Searching for Color

H and I went in search of fall (autumnal) colors, finding lots of dull tan and brown, an abundance of yellows but few of the reds that make some areas so beautiful in the fall.

Brilliant fall colors are a feature of northeastern North America. Tourists come from near and far to view the colors, and those tourists are often a driving force in the economies of rural communities.

As the days grow shorter in the fall the chlorophyll in trees’ leaves begins to fade and no more is produced. Yellow and orange pigments (carotenoids) that were there all summer become visible. As the same time, sugars in the leaves form red and purple pigments (anthocyanins) that create brilliant red leaves.

To produce those sugars the trees require sunlight and carbon dioxide, but also use water. Much of the summer and early fall were exceedingly dry in our area and so many leaves were deprived of the water necessary to produce the sugars. No sugars = no red pigments = no red leaves.

And so we went in search of fall colors, especially the reds –

 

 

Unfortunately, many of those who boarded tour busses to see hillsides with brilliant fall colors may have been a bit disappointed. But if they looked a little more closely they’d have seen the colors they sought.