Fall Snapshots

Autumn is meandering along on its way to winter. A few vestiges of summer abide—the chilled tattered late dragonfly and lost-looking turtles. Early winter residents like slate-colored juncos and white-throated sparrows are showing up. Both are sometimes fooled by autumn days—day length is about the same as mid-May, and you can hear the occasional spring peeper call in the swamp. The odd white-throated sparrow as well begins to tune up its song, which sounds like “old Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody”, but they rarely get past the “Sam” part—maybe they figure out what is going on and are too embarrassed to continue.

If you keep your eyes open, you can see some of the fall specialties in evidence. A four-point buck, neck swollen from testosterone, picks his way across my backyard, oblivious to everything and everyone but does. (This is the time of year you see road-killed deer whenever you run an errand). Squirrels, their autumn breeding season in full swing, scamper up tree trunks in twos and threes and fours, spiraling their way like long gray scarves. Oak trees are finally releasing their crispy brown leaves to pile up in the gutters. Oaks are the last to let go in fall—I’ve heard Garrison Keeler explain it as vanity, but since they are among the last to leaf out in spring, it all evens out.

A northern harrier (aka marsh hawk) moseys his way across the marsh at Huntley Meadows. Banking and turning at walking speed, he checks out the flocks of mallards, testing for any sign of weakness as they explode off the surface. The harrier, rump showing the bright white diamond of feathers that screams “field mark!” to any birder, milks every erg of energy from the breeze with an ease and efficiency any America’s Cup skipper would sell his soul for. And the harrier does it in three dimensions to boot. He will linger here for a few days before moving on for the winter to the more expansive Potomac River marshes, sharing the area with the night shift of short-eared owls.

Canada geese, too big for the harrier to bother with, are busy harvesting a summer’s worth of marsh sedges. Think of them as feathered sheep, grazing on the swamp grasses, pulling up the stalks to feed on the calorie-rich rootstocks. Bow waves of grass blades form as they swim through the shallow water, past the skulking Virginia rails who have taken up residence in the marsh and pad daintily between the faded brown stalks of cat-tails, long since gone to seed. A pair of hooded mergansers newly arrived from points north, skirts the edges of the marsh, jumpy as cats, while northern shovelers doze in the watery sunlight.

Here and there, almost like after thoughts, or maybe grace notes, American witch hazel is in full bloom, forsythia-yellow blossoms the same color as maple leaves and easily overlooked amid all the riot of color.

The planet is turning, winter closing in, but not just yet. There is still business to be done, still things to do before the cold falls and the hemisphere sleeps.

Peter and Frederick..

This article will appear in the December issue of The Capital Guide, the publication of the Guild of Professional Tour Guides of Washington, D.C.

At first glance, Peter L’Enfant and Frederick Douglass seem unlikely companions—L’Enfant, a slightly built Frenchman whose vision resulted in the city of Washington, D.C. and Douglass, a powerful orator whose calls for the abolition of slavery gave rise to the Emancipation Proclamation and the modern Civil Rights movement. They stand, paired in the lobby at One Judiciary Square, as the District’s contribution to the National Statuary Hall collection in the U.S. Capitol. Visitors need not go through security; the statues are easily viewed from the entrance as well as from outside the building.

The two larger-than-life bronze statues, each seven feet tall and weighting close to 850 pounds, were commissioned in 2007 by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. An advisory commission of historians and art experts (50 prominent citizens nominated by public ballot) chose local sculptors Gordon Kray and Steven Weitzman to create the statues of L’Enfant and Douglass, respectively.


Each man is shown practicing his profession, tools at hand. L’Enfant stands atop Jenkins Hill, later to become Capital Hill, plans for the Federal City and a pair of dividers in his hands. Douglass, leonine head erect, is depicted giving his 1852 July 4th speech, considered by many historians to be his finest. Weitzman shows Douglass as both orator and writer—a copy of the North Star, Douglass’s abolitionist newspaper clutched in his right hand, his left gripping a lectern on which his pen and inkwell rest.


The Statuary Hall collection in the Capitol displays two statues of historical figures from each state, 100 in all. Since the District is not a state, Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District’s non-voting delegate to Congress, proposed special legislation authorizing Douglass and L’Enfant to join the select group under the Rotunda. Representative Norton’s bill has been languishing in Committee since in 2005, but she plans on reintroducing the legislation in the near future. In the meantime, visitors may see the sculptures in their temporary home at 441 4th St., NW.

Autumn Closing In

Nights are getting crisp, days are filled with changing colors as the trees suck the nutrients back out of their leaves and begin to shut down. Winter’s coming on. We tend to think of autumn and spring as transition periods between the absolutes of heat and ice—parts of the pendulum swing before it hits the top or bottom. In reality, they are seasons of their own with their own milestones, their own comings and goings. Autumn and spring are more subtle, more nuanced than the exuberances of summer or winter’s bleakness. Pat says the autumns in Colorado are blazing with the bright yellow of aspens but lack the reds and oranges that make the East coast a leaf-peeper's Mecca.


If you pay enough attention, you can find the hallmarks of any season. Spring has its massed wildflower displays of ephemeral beauty, autumn, its own flowers and leaves. But here and there, you can still see summer’s children in a final curtain call before the cold stops the show.

A common spreadwing damselfly settles onto a perch, well below the level of the stiff breeze gusting above the tops of the cattails. Clear gossamer wings neither folded over its back nor spread stiffly out, you can almost hear the rustle of crinolines as it adjusts. Weak fliers, keeping out of the greater sky, damselflies prefer to hunt low, gleaning aphids and tiny bugs from leaves.


Autumn Meadow hawks, the last dragonflies of the year, sway in the breeze perched atop cattail leaves, alone or in coupled pairs, glowing red in the thin sunlight.


Orange and black flashes overhead give away migrating Monarch butterflies, riding the winds, looking barely in control as they flutter their way toward Mexico and the groves of fir trees where they will spend their winter.

Other sets of orange and black, a bit smaller, a bit redder give away the monarch’s mimics and doppelgangers, the viceroy butterflies. Viceroys take advantaged of the monarch’s retchingly bad taste to gain immunity from predators. They are often one of the last butterflies on the wing, first letting the monarchs pass by to teach birds not to eat anything orange. Orange isn’t just for breakfast. Trust me on this.

Autumn rains have called forth red-backed salamanders. Leaving their flooded underground lairs, they climb up tree trunks, bushes, and even walls to find some breathing space. Lungless and respiring through damp skin, they are almost never seen during the hot days of summer. The dampness of fall is the perfect time to see them. Coming in one of three flavors, the common redback with its dull red stripe running down its back, intermingles with the less common “leadback” whose red has been replaced with dull gray. A third form, more common elsewhere, is bright orange, mimicking red efts. An unrelated species, the red eft is the juvenile of the eastern newt. Newts live in beaver ponds and when the population reaches critical mass, efts leave in search of new horizons. Trudging across the forest floor, the bright orange efts tell predators to stay away—they are mildly toxic and will sicken anything foolish enough to eat one.

Red-headed woodpeckers work the dead snags at the edges of the beaver pond. White oaks, killed by the rising pond, the wood is rotted and punky enough for a wide variety of insect prey and soft enough for the woodpeckers to hammer in acorns and hickory nuts for future dining. Red-heads are one of the few woodpeckers in North America who store food for winter. Mice, flying squirrels, and gray squirrels do the same and are not above raiding the woodpecker’s pantry when times get lean.

This year, times will be good for all—it’s a mast year for oaks and other nut-bearing trees. Acorns litter the forest floor in abundance—more than enough for the hoarders to gather and bury. Oaks will belch forth a huge crop of acorns every so often and gray squirrels will gather them up and bury a few at a time in scatter hordes. Squirrels forget some spots or are detained by predators. The acorns, having been obligingly planted and away from other species with a taste for nuts, sprout to grow into new forests. Squirrels have spent thousands of years selecting the fattest and tastiest acorns to store, while oaks have spent the same time selecting squirrels to act as gardeners. Who has domesticated who?