Migration Time
By Dr. Everett Vreeland
If you watch the natural world at all you can’t help noticing the gathering and bustling of birds. Groups change daily as a flock moves on and another arrives. Their numbers and species seem to be in constant change and often are in mixed groups buzzing with mutual excitement. Geese go by, way high, especially on moonlit nights and, on those nights, I don’t think the world looks much different to them as it does in daylight.
A few people have spoken of the large groups of blackbirds that sometimes stop to feed and I have noticed that these are often mixed groups containing redwings and grackles.
People agree that there is present, in the fall, a melancholy feeling when the leaves change and the weather cools and also that it is somehow pleasant. I have been sure for a few years now that we did, in the dim past, in fact, migrate for many reasons and the melancholy we feel now is because we no longer do it and miss its excitement. How about that.
Two things, related to color are evident currently. The beech trees in most places retain their leaves longer than any others and remain brilliant and gold in the darkening backgrounds. The deer a few have mentioned, are indeed getting much darker coats as the bulk of where they live becomes only dark tree trunks. I see this not as a wondrous happening, but more a function again of natural selection. Over a million years ago, or longer. if you were a deer who held a red coat in fall, you were spotted and soon in the stewpot and if you were dark and hid among the brush you remained in the gene pool to beget many little kids who, in addition, could return to a reddish blend-in coat come spring. Hunters know that a deer can “hide” by standing still - with a dark coat.
