Every outing becomes a note: the date, the place, the weather, what was out, and which phase of the season it was in. The strip below is the year; the column under it is the last eight notes.
Each cell is a month. Lit cells hold published notes.
fruiting
A chanterelle flush appeared on a fixed 60 m transect at Oak Creek on 27 October, three days after the soil at 10 cm fell below 12°C for the first time and the first heavy rain of the autumn arrived.
senescence
On 24 October the temperature fell 9.4°C from the top of Bald Hill to the valley floor, a full inversion, and the fog line sat at 180 m. The two zones were in different seasons: frosted and grey below, sunny and 15°C above.
migration
Six hundred and forty cackling geese arrived at Finley on 21 October in four flocks on a north wind, feeding on the refuge's grass fields. They are distinguishable from Canada geese at 300 m by voice and by the shorter neck.
senescence
Eight tagged black cottonwoods at Luckiamute went from 30 per cent to 92 per cent leaf fall in thirteen days, the fastest fall of any tree on this reach, and the leaves are going straight into the river rather than onto the bank.
migration
A fixed 200 m walk at Jackson-Frazier on 15 October produced 63 sparrows of five species, against 11 on 24 September. The water table rose 14 cm in three weeks and the boardwalk is flooded at two points.
senescence
Six litter traps under Oregon white oaks collected 41 grams of dry leaf per square metre between 5 and 12 October, and the oaks were at 62 per cent leaf fall against 18 per cent for the same-day ash trees.
fruiting
A fruit transect at Oak Creek on 9 October found 340 rose hips at 31 per cent of the original crop and 96 crabapples at 74 per cent, and the birds working the two were different species in a fixed order.
senescence
One red-breasted nuthatch made 22 separate caches in 30 minutes of watching on 6 October, all of them in bark crevices between 2 m and 9 m up, and it revisited two of them within the half hour.