The first warning came by way of a little green hummingbird buzzing a few feet above me as I reclined on the back patio furniture. It was making sure it was safe to sample some potted flowers before ascending vertically into the branches.
The next day, another, slightly darker, touched with iridescence, landed on a wire of strung-up solar-powered lights above the outdoor farm table, clearly taking the measure of the human intruder in paradise. And then gone.
August is their time, hummingbirds, and this apparently is their place. All that’s missing is the sugar-water feeder I’ve neglected to put up for fear of a column of marching ants.
Then came another sign of season’s end. Over the weekend, a few straggler birds began gathering at feeders I’d deliberately left empty all summer. Cardinal, tufted titmouse, cowbird. Even the adorable chickadee. “Where’s our seed, a-hole?” they seemed to be saying. So, they’ve felt a cooler night or two and are suddenly needy? They’ve spied a couple of yellow leaves and now demand the means to start fattening for fall?
A scrappy blue jay made like his cuter gray cousin way out west, the camp robber, and brazenly stood atop our patio table picking at crumbs from a meal the night before, staring me down, daring me to shoo him away. I declined.
But I did break down, and give in, and dump store-bought birdseed in any reasonable feeding device I could get my hands on. Wrong? I’d once read that it was inadvisable to feed them at this time of year; there’s plenty to peck at in the natural world and you’d be doing them a disservice, dependency-wise. Later I heard that it doesn’t matter at all, they’re okay either way, they’ll eat at your feeder or they won’t, and life goes on.
I was simply happy to welcome the flock back to the wilds of western Noyac.
Of course, this being the East End, there I was early Monday evening, looking left out the window above the kitchen sink to see a squirrel swing like a monkey from one hanging feeder, and right to watch a deer — a beautiful creature, really, from a distance, anyway, despite the pestilential reputation, almost glowing orange in the fading light — as it contentedly tongued at and emptied the entirety of a plastic bird feeding tube in a matter of minutes.
I didn’t even try to stop them. Mother Nature’s too big. Mother Nature’s too strong.