9-17-2025 10:25pm

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Autumn

Beth Callahan Editor

Nature Close to Home and Ohio Certified Volunteer Naturalist Dave Woehr shares monthly naturalist stories.

LEBANON, OH -- It’s late summer, and it is hot and dry. Humidity is down from a few weeks ago, but the persistent high temperatures and lack of rain are uncovering some signs of fall already. Some trees are beginning to show fall colors, and a few are already dropping leaves. Flower and vegetable gardens are showing stress. They are not alone. Out in the country the corn and soybean fields are turning brown. Harvesting of those crops may start early this year.

Birds are done nesting and raising their broods for this year. They are venturing outside of their summer nesting habitats and making more frequent appearances in the backyard. I saw very little hummingbird activity around my nectar feeder from April to July. But now the hummers are appearing three or four at a time and having to compete with honeybees for a sip of the sugar water it contains.

Fortunately my zinnias provide plenty of nectar for the hummingbirds until the bees leave the feeder. I haven’t seen a male hummingbird in a month. They may have gone south for the winter already.

Typically the males arrive before the females in the spring and begin their winter migration to Central America in the fall well before the females leave our area.

This year I planted some sunflowers in the backyard that grew to ten feet in height with heads the size of a steering wheel ! The seeds in those heads are ripening now and drawing the attention of Goldfinches, Titmice, Chickadees, Cardinals and Nuthatches.

The chickadees also dine on the seeds of zinnias plucking the blooms petal by petal and finding a seed at the base of each one.

I have been somewhat discouraged the last several years by the lack of butterflies that always visited the flower gardens during the summer. This year was no different with few butterfly sightings until just the past few weeks. Suddenly, quite a few different species have made an appearance in numbers that I haven’t seen in a long time.

They are attracted by the brilliant colors of my zinnias and spend a lot of time enjoying the nectar they provide. I’ve recently seen the Monarch, Tiger Swallowtail, Black Swallowtail, Red-spotted Purple and Common Buckeye to name a few.

They seem to know that they better enjoy a good late summer meal now because a frost could kill the flowers within a month.

The Jerusalem Artichoke is now blooming along the edges of our country roads. Its beautiful 3-inch diameter yellow blooms atop ten-foot tall stalks signal that summer is coming to an end. Yes, right now, it’s just late summer according to the calendar, but there are indications from Mother Nature that Autumn isn’t far away.