When my late father was little boy, maybe three years old, he learned about the succession of day and night, and he learned about the difference between Sun and Moon. He was a bright little kid and curious and very active. His grown, and nearly grown brothers and sisters were crazy about this late arrival in their Mother's life, but there was a problem.
Their father had died in the Spanish Flu epidemic six weeks before Dad was born, and their mother was devastated.
Dad's sister Frieda, was one of Dad's main babysitters, even when she was married and pregnant with her first child. She told the family the story of the clear morning she was walking with Dad when he noticed, for the first time, that the Sun was up in the East and the Moon was still visible in the West.
Frieda said that Dad laughed out loud when he recognized that Sun and Moon were both visible. She asked Dad why he was laughing. Dad exclaimed "God is playing a joke on us! He put the Moon where we can see it and the Sun is still up."
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| Autumn Moon amidst the trees. |
Dad had this sense of wonder all his life. It was one of his most endearing qualities.
And now that Autumn is well and truly here, we have all seen wondrous changes in color and motion. The trees and many of the field plants have gone from green to gold and red and orange. Migratory birds and insects have left for warmer climates.
Thirty-five years ago, I was living with my family on North Washtenaw Avenue in Chicago. We noticed one year a long procession of Monarch butterflies going down our street, just over the sidewalk. It was only the next year, when we saw them going the opposite direction that it dawned on us that they migrating. We know a lot more about Monarchs now, that they spend their winters in Mexico or New Mexico, that the generation that begins the migration is not the same one that arrives, and more.
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| North Park Village Nature Center Monarch, 2012 |
I do not have a photo of the butterfly migration, but I thought of the Monarch butterflies the September day that I found myself in the middle of a fast moving flock of dragonflies, heading south. As it happened, I was walking along the East Berm in the North Park Village Nature Center with a camera in my hand when this happened. It felt like Peter Pan with at least a dozen Tinker-Belles.
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| Dragonfly heading south |
They glittered in the midday sunlight, and zipped left and right as they passed around me. I had been shooting flowers with a macro lens and this was the best I could come up with.
This was also the season of frogs. The ponds at NPVNC were home to perhaps thousands of tadpoles a couple months ago. In September and October, the mature frogs showed up on the lily pads in the ponds, sometimes one could see a dozen or more frogs. Strangely, they would just sit there. They may have had a high-pitched, quiet kind of call. I'm not sure.
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Frogs in the West Pond
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They reminded me of the frogs we saw in Monet's pond at Giverny last May, but our frogs were mostly quiet while the French frogs were really quite loud.
There was loads of ducks in the ponds. The Mallards seem to be there all year 'round,
but the ponds are also hosts to travellers in Fall and Spring.
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| Flock of Wood Ducks in West Pond |
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| Wood Ducks Close-up |
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| Geese landing on Wood Ducks |
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| Warbler by the water |
There are also land birds and wading birds. I caught this shot of a warbler about to take wing by the West Pond.
Among the most fascinating creatures we see in NPVNC are the deer. There has been a population of females in the park, and somehow, despite the fences and the gates, there were also a few males. The males browse and graze and wait for the Autumnal Rutting Season.
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Stag waiting for rut
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| Mother and son show affection, July 2012 |
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| Mother and daughter: October 2012 |
The deer can be "sexed".... by looking at their heads.
What did you think I was going to say? Huh? Young male deer have visible bumps on their heads where their antlers will come in later.
The Mother and son above were outside the gates of the park, and he was happy. I do not know how else to describe his cavorting about. And the two of them were licking one another's faces and necks. He was doing a little dance. Perhaps I go to far by ascribing feelings to actions. They mostly ignored the dozen camera toting biped in various sizes who craned their necks to watch.
The Mother and daughter are regulars in the park now. The younger has lost her spots and she is obviously weaned. A couple weeks ago, she was just as obviously not weaned, and her mother was obviously growing tired of the whole business.
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| Daughter deer negotiates fence |
I have seen these two deer together, and apart. It is harder to be sure who they are when they are not together, but their bond is unmistakeable when they are together.
BTW, the photo of the two of them together was taken early in the morning of October 11th. They were lying down in the foliage just fifty yards northeast of the Nature Center and I was shooting foliage when I rudely woke them.
A grown deer does not deign to crawl under a fence like this one. They gracefully leap over the top. This is obviously a lesson for later.
And finally, here is another example of Autumnal color in the park.
Squirrels are amazingly agile. They will somehow leap from one pencil-thin branch to another pencil-thin branch in clear violation of the laws of physics, in order to get at a single acorn. 
