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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s customary to declare summer in the United States over after Labor Day.\u00a0 Other people look at the Autumnal Equinox as the end of summer as well they may since it really is the beginning of astronomical fall and the point at which the nights become longer than the days.\u00a0 Some more practical folks just call it over when the kids go back to school.\u00a0 Of course, during the COVID panic there is no school so that\u2019s sort of irrelevant.<\/p>\n
Here at the compound we have a more poignant measure.\u00a0 Summer is over when the hummingbirds leave.\u00a0 They left yesterday.\u00a0 Camera Girl is sad.\u00a0 She told me I should memorialize this event with a post about the end of summer.\u00a0 As the ever-solicitous husband, her wish was my command so, here I am prattling on.<\/p>\n
It is funny though how exactly these birds seem to define the end of summer in this exact locale.\u00a0 Already, even on a day that reaches eighty degrees, the air is different.\u00a0 Drier and lighter.\u00a0 And the late afternoon is cooler and breezier.\u00a0 And now by seven p.m. the sun is gone and only twilight remains.\u00a0 The leaves are coming down at a decent clip.\u00a0 These leaves are yellow and must be coming from some of the species that lose them early, the cherry and the birch.\u00a0 But it\u2019s the start.\u00a0 Next the maples will start turning.\u00a0 The oaks will hold out the longest, well into October.\u00a0 But it\u2019s the start.\u00a0 And because the leaves were starting to fall Camera Girl, who is, like most women, a practical creature had the pool company close the pool down and put on the cover this week.\u00a0 Maybe that\u2019s what tipped off the hummingbirds.<\/p>\n
And Camera Girl informs me that the birds that haven\u2019t left yet go to bed earlier now.\u00a0 By dinner time they\u2019re gone.\u00a0 So, all in all, the whole natural world around me has conceded the end of summer 2020.\u00a0 But not me.\u00a0 I rail against it.\u00a0 Oh, soon enough I\u2019ll shift my attention to fall foliage photography and then onto reviews of horror movies for Halloween.\u00a0 But not yet.\u00a0 I still haven\u2019t seen a preying mantis this year.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t gotten a picture of a heron on the pond or a painted turtle in the pond.\u00a0 I still want to try the 600mm lens with a hawk in flight.\u00a0 So, though I promised Camera Girl to declare and mourn the end of summer I will use this last full week of official summer to hunt my last summer targets.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s customary to declare summer in the United States over after Labor Day.\u00a0 Other people look at the Autumnal Equinox as the end of summer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1020,342,253],"class_list":["post-11918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","tag-hummingbird","tag-new-england-summer","tag-summer"],"yoast_head":"\n