CT in the Fall

This is a beautiful time of year to be visiting in Connecticut.  My sister lives in the northeast part of the state where maples, oaks, beeches and other trees have turned golden and crimson.  We drive to New Haven each morning for her work, and notice the trees further south have lost their leaves already.  I am a volunteer at Yale-Peabody Museum in the Vertebrate Zoology section, so this week I was able to help with re-organizing specimens in the backroom collections area.  Its still exciting to walk into the collections and be face-to-face with a Bison skeleton or a Jaguar or an Owl.
     In the mornings I walked around the entire campus looking for birds, and I found them.  Sparrows:  Song, Savannah, White-throated, White-crowned, Field, Swamp, and Chipping.  The regulars:  Blue Jays, Robins, Cardinals, Downy and Red-bellied Woodpeckers, American Goldfinches, Yellow-rumped Warblers, Ruby-crowned Kinglets, Chickadees, Titmice, Nuthatches and Wild Turkeys are present.  I was surprised with a Palm Warbler and the Blue-headed Vireo.
     Monday we celebrated my birthday in grand style.  Max, a teen-aged chef-to-be, made a gluten-free Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting that was wonderful.  Sue made home-made ice cream that was very good, as well.
    Wednesday Sue and I went birding on the coast, hitting all the good areas she knows about. October is an in-between time for birding; most of the summer birds have already departed for southern climates and the winter ducks and sea birds have not arrived yet.  We found 62 species for the day.  Highlights were a Nelson's (Sharp-tailed) Sparrow, and a Lapland Longspur.
     Today my most exciting bird was a Pileated Woodpecker in the Maple-Beech forest near Willimantic River. 

Photos of southern New England in the Fall.