Seesawing of the Seasons

Summer’s running on empty. From 38,000 feet above the surface of Planet Earth, it’s easy to see the changes when you head west and back to the future. By the time I arrived in Salt Lake City I was only an hour late for lunch, which I had eaten in Chicago a couple hours before, which was an hour earlier than it was in Cleveland. Or something like that.
But above it all the changing colors dominate the landscape and your mind. Ohio, from that altitude still has an attitude of green—mossy green, but green nonetheless. There are the occasional punctuation marks of orange and red, reminding us that the sentence has to come to an end. The unsure yellow spots seemed more like question marks.
Iowa this day was decidedly tan, punctuated by a bit of gray here and there. Few and far between were barns, water towers and other evidence of human habitation. Gray/brown was the color today in Iowa and will be the color in Cleveland in the future. Thank goodness for Northern Cardinals and Blue Jays.
As we moved over the mountains in Colorado it was suddenly white, bright white with fresh snow capping the rocks. Lower down was the bumpy grayish brown of last season’s leftovers, not unlike that piece of meatloaf you found in the back of the fridge last week.
And on to Utah. More incredible shades of tan and gray and again, snow. Lots of snow. It was Cleveland’s future. Well, okay, minus the mountains.
I made a quick three-hour trip out the Antelope Island State Park, located in the middle of the Great Salt Lake. I was amazed to see snow floating on the water as far as I could see. Through my binoculars I discovered it was not snow. It was more American Avocets than I ever dreamed were on the planet! Tens of thousands of them, all virtually in basic plumage. As far as I could see, and here I think you can safely measure the distance in miles, were avocets. I pulled out the scope (Why we need confirmation of what we already know remains a mystery to me.) and the view, distorted by a shortening of perspective, was even more spectacular.
When the ranger walked up to me and asked if I was going to pay my $9 entry fee I jokingly said, “I think I’ve seen the whole show already.”
She looked at the avocets as I do European Starlings and said, “Well, the big flock is at the West end of the causeway.” Yikes!
She was about half right. The flock at the end of the causeway was enormous, however, what made it seem larger was that tens of thousands of the birds in the flock were Black-necked Stilts! Here the massive white covering of the lake was punctuated with black of their necks and backs.
I figured I had already squeezed more than my $9 out of this place, however I should drive around to see if there were any bonus birds about. Mid-September is the nadir of the birding season in this part of the West. I got lucky. A Burrowing Owl who should have been on his way south played peek-a-boo with me until he figured I was less of a threat than the Northern Harrier who kept passing overhead. His golden eyes, the color of the turning aspen leaves in the mountains behind him, stared at me, never blinking. We chatted a bit about the changing season, going to Mexico for some warmer weather and did I think the global warming thing would change his migration patterns. Birds of the feather ...
By the time I arrived at Park City, my destination, most of the snow had melted. It hung on in places hiding from the sun. The mountains at 6,700 feet were awash in golden aspen leaves and snow. The air up here is so clean you can’t even see what you’re breathing. Just like Cleveland will be in a couple months. Well, maybe not exactly, however it was a nice preview of coming attractions.