Labor Day Eve Wildflowers and a Bird Report

I had a Labor Day Eve rant in my drafts.  I wrote it yesterday.  It's going to stay in my drafts, for now, anyway.  And probably all of next week.  If I publish it, it may get rewritten, once I cool down.

I got to thinking, do any of my regular readers come to my blog for rants?  I doubt it.  I think they come for an escape from the burdens of living in a time of great change.

Right now, nature is still an escape.  Come with my on a walk I took a couple of days ago and see some of the wildflowers I found.

Fall is nearly here.  How can we tell?  Besides the shortening days, and birds preparing to migrate, there are certain wildflowers that bloom. One is this wild sunflower.  I don't know what species this is; there are several in our county, apparently.

One of the many goldenrods we have.

In a field of goldenrod, I found these - my guess is New York asters,  I get them confused with New England asters.  As much as I love these (I even have a cultivated variety in my front yard) my heart always sinks a little, because I know the last wildflower blooms are beginning to come out.

At least the super-invasive knotweed is starting to peter out.  This one was still going strong.

Speaking of a field of goldenrod, these lovely flowers start to bloom here, now, in mid-August. Climate change.

I think this is late flowering boneset. 

While I was writing this post yesterday, I watched birds approaching our feeder.  Seemed to be a lot of black capped chickadee action and they were quite vocal, too.  These are not migrating birds. These birds amaze me - how can something so small and active survive our winters?

The hummingbirds have vanished from our yard.  We are keeping our feeder up for now just in case any migrate through.  Yesterday, I saw my first tufted titmouse in quite a while.  White breasted nuthatches have, in the past week or two, rediscovered our feeder, too.

This will be our first winter with bird feeders and I hope it will take some of the sting out of having to delay my snowbirding plans due to COVID.

In the meantime, I'll enjoy the wildflowers until they are gone.