Ah, Autumn, season of mists and mellow fruitfulness...That’s what the poet said. Hardly!

A Group of Starlings Gather in a Vertical Home Sewage Dissipation Apparatus

Keats was right, there’s a lot of twittering going on — just not of swallows. These birds, that spend the summers in pairs, here and there, quiet as wood, as aggressive as street gangs, pretty as mother of pearl, have come together into a swarm with a mind of its own, and skittish! Boy, are they skittish:

Starlings Reacting to a Passing Car

Keats’ poem is one of the gems of the English language, and a haunting evocation of a type of rural life. Here, English starlings are an invasive species. Beautiful, though.

Three Minutes Later

A new perch, up on the hill. Two minutes later they were gone.

It won’t be long before they pack it in and go to California, or wherever it is they go. The rest of us get the supreme pleasure of staying in the short days and waiting for the snow.