It's good to be back at our Littleton, Colorado, farm, if only for a week. September is always a good time to visit and, since I was last here in July, there has been a significant change. Recent rains have greened-up the "lawn" and the trees and shrubs look especially vibrant for late summer. It's been a good year for pears, apricots and crab apples but the other apple trees have a rather sparse crop. The mulberry trees have been picked clean by the robins, orioles and house finches but there's plenty of juniper berries to last the winter.
The rose of sharon and trumpet vines are still in bloom, attracting our resident hummingbirds and a few migrants from the mountains. Other visitors have included western wood pewees, Lincoln's sparrows, rufous-sided towhees, yellow warblers, western tanagers and a surprising number of blue-gray gnatcatchers. The collared doves and lesser goldfinches, first seen in July, are still hanging around, joining the usual mix of chickadees, northern flickers, mourning doves, house finches, blue jays and magpies.
A neighbor is boarding a quartet of calves on our large pasture and all of the activity seems to have evicted our resident fox. For now, the squirrels and songbirds need only fear the occasional "sharpie" that streaks through the neighborhood and the Swainson's hawks that often soar above the farm.
