Last Sunday after church… following the equinox, but still a beautiful summery day (albeit with bright autumn leaves)… we took a drive over to Ithaca, and visited Sapsucker Woods.

Sapsucker Woods is the wildlife sanctuary attached to the world-renowned Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Many bird watchers and bird students find it a very special place because of the association, although it’s not particularly a place for rare birds. It’s just a place to enjoy (and study) birds.

We first visited Ithaca 26 years ago, as my wife was awaiting open-heart surgery. Now she’s waiting for a pacemaker, and she wanted to make another trip.

All of the trails are good trails, level (mainly) and well-kept (with some roots here and there). They’re good to wander around on spotting birds, frogs, squirrels, and other small wildlife. They’re good to exercise on, if you want to stride out in pleasant settings. They’re very good of you have heart or balance problems. We set off on the three-quarter-mile Wilson Trail, and we started at the pond, right by the visitors center.

The center itself is closed “for the duration,” but there were a fair number of people at the pond and on the trails – all of them observing good mask discipline and distance discipline. We saw a group of two or three college-agers, a couple of separate families with young children, one three-generational family group, and several couples or individuals. It sounds like a lot, but for most of our walk we were alone in the woods.

The pond is shrunken and anemic just now, choked by lily pads and surrounded by mudflats, thanks to the drought or semi-drought we’ve been suffering. A couple of Canada geese were honking away anyhow, while nearby a small duck (maybe a black duck) ignored them on its never-ending quest for water bugs. On the island nearby, a pileated woodpecker puttered around in the leafy tops, while an immature red-headed woodpecker zipped in and out along the shore.

The pond was open to the blue sky, but a few steps away we were in a yellow wood under the forest canopy, enjoying quiet, in companionable shade. A few deer had dug their hooves in along our way, while squirrels vibrated themselves across the trail, up the trees, under dead logs, along the forest floor… sometimes all within the space of ten seconds.

The trees were still leafed out, and the colors were vibrant that weekend, but it was also the first week that leaves seemed to be falling with purpose. They were dappling the trail and the boardwalks – in a few days, they’d be covering them. Most of those that had fallen (or WERE falling) were yellow, but Joyce found some eye-catching specimens that were mostly yellow, but with green streaks along the veins.

Although the trail goes around the pond, for most of its way it loses the sight, until you come back almost to the shadow of the visitors center. The one duck and the two geese were still on the job, but now we also saw a great blue heron, perching its four-foot height on a high dead branch. Blue dragonflies zipped by, back, and away in the immemorial manner of their kind.

Milkweed had gone by, cattails were breaking open… down from both was caught in the corner cobwebs. Among the reeds and tall grasses, asters and thistles beamed out brightly in summer’s dying green. A pleasant walk. We opened the car, took a seat, and shared a peanut butter sandwich. The trail was just right, while we’re waiting for the pacemaker.