(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . It's a beautiful autumn but wildlife may have a difficult winter. Street Prophets Coffee Hour. [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-22 Welcome to the Street Prophets Coffee Hour, the place where politics meets up with religion, science, art, nature, and life. Come in, have a cuppa and a cookie (or three!) and join us. Street Prophets is an open thread. All topics are welcome. The Gaelic word for October is Damhair (DAH-ver), the Month of the Stag, presumably because stags fight at this time of year. I don’t have stags hanging around in my wooded area or my fields, so no pictures of those. If I were naming this month, the last few nights I’d have been tempted to name it Coyote, because those packs of coyotes have been singing in the wee hours. Not yipping, the way they do when they chase and catch prey, but songs that give me thrills. But no one cares what I’d name any month, so I just go out and take pictures. A word of warning: Do not go out into the woods when the wind is high! The chance of a limb coming down on you may be small, but it isn’t zero by a long way. Know what I can’t photograph? Things that aren’t there. We had a messy mix of weather in the spring, and the year got off to a rocky start. And some things didn’t get a start at all. I saw no acorns on my bur oak trees. None. I saw maybe five walnuts on my black walnut tree. There are no berries on the beautyberry bushes, and no cones are on the scarlet sumac bushes. This may be a tough winter for wildlife. This is what I actually do have now, in mid October. I finally caught up with those wild morning glories. They bloom a heavenly blue when they first open. As advertised, they are only open in the mornings. They’ll fold back up, but they re-open for several days. But after a day or two they turn a lovely deep pink. Some accidents are happy ones. Willow trees are weak and fragile, and they often break and block the path around the pond. This one, instead of making a barrier, made a nice gateway. It will eventually fall all the way and need to be removed, but for now it’s a picturesque welcome to the pond. Yes, poison ivy is beautiful in autumn. But it still has plenty of urushiol oil for those who are allergic. It doesn’t seem to affect many animals, though. Your dog won’t react. Neither do the deer and goats, who find it a treat. It should have red berries for the birds, but that’s another wild food source that’s missing this year. I didn’t see a single berry. Most of my many hedge trees in the woods produced no fruit this year, but one at the back of the yard had several on the ground. The hedge apples (or Osage oranges) open to reveal hundreds of dry pods with a small seed at the end. Squirrels will eat these in winter, but it isn’t their first choice of food. Virginia creeper is a native vine that covers anything it can climb on. This is on a corner post of my deck. It turns a lovely red, then purple, before shedding its leaves altogether. It should have blue berries that are a favorite of many birds, and it does have some this year, but far less than half of the number I usually see. Something shed a red leaf in the woods. I saw maybe a dozen scattered around, but I didn’t see anything they may have come from, so maybe that tree or shrub has already shed all its leaves. I had several dying ash trees removed a few years ago, because of that emerald ash borer. These lovely rosettes are on one of the stumps. Just a few feet away, another ash stump is growing an entirely different fungus. I grow vegetables in containers. It gives me the advantage of a raised bed and means that my ancient self doesn’t have to dig into hard soil. Some time ago I found a bit of advice, to put a decaying log into the bottom of the container. It will decompose slowly and collect water, to be used by the plants. This log was tipped out onto the ground and is hosting its own choice of fungus. And yet another fungus has grown up in the spent potting soil. The thread is now open. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/22/2200843/-It-s-a-beautiful-autumn-but-wildlife-may-have-a-difficult-winter-Street-Prophets-Coffee-Hour?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/