Migration

My father would tell me that the earliest milestone to discern an approaching autumn was not the obvious leaf-color change but the slightly cooler temperatures of late August and early September mornings. It was not the daytime afternoon temperature, which could be the same as a midsummer July afternoon, but just the morning coolness. I have come to learn there is another telltale sign of fall - an annual migration of sorts. Not the common Canada goose migration, which is pretty enough in its own right, but a sometimes less-attractive American college student migration.

We had a big wasps' nest last summer. We were told that it's safe to remove the nest after frost, but we still see wasps. When will they be gone? It takes a hard freeze to kill the worker wasps. They die, and the newly mated queens abandon the nest and winter elsewhere. In the spring they start a new hive somewhere else. No wasps will reuse an old hive. Wasps, as well as yellow jackets and European hornets, all behave this way. This fall has been mild. When normal winter temperatures kick in, you won't see wasps anymore.

Home decorating styles, like life itself, evolve over time to reflect changing tastes, circumstances and cultural influences. That's what accounts for mounting interest in the west-by-northwest migration of one of the most popular and enduring design trends of recent years, generically known as Southwest style.Brewing for some time, a home-on-the-range renaissance and a revival of interest in furnishings, art, objects and artifacts associated with America's original cowboy-and-Indian and pioneer-and-prospector era is only now beginning to find widespread expression.

For years, the right and left have been bickering in Maryland over whether or not people are coming or going, arguments that solved nothing, changed nothing and improved nothing. It's been a hot topic this year, with individual income tax hikes and proposals to raise the gasoline tax front and center on the policy agenda. The question is: At what point do high taxes drive people away to other states? "Virginia, here I come" is a popular refrain on social media posts on groups like Change Maryland's Facebook page, with 25,000 followers who have legitimate qualms about the state's relatively high corporate and individual income tax burdens.

Biologists studying pronghorn antelope in Wyoming are calling for measures to protect what they say is the longest remaining migration route used by any mammal in the continental United States. Beginning in October each year, as many as 300 antelope leave their summer feeding and fawning areas in Grand Teton National Park, and walk more than 175 miles to lower winter grazing land between Pinedale and Rock Springs in southwest Wyoming. From March to June, they follow the same route in reverse, part of it crossing high mountains and threading narrow canyons.

The Snow Geese, by William Fiennes. Random House. 288 pages. $24.95. This is one man's story about finding his way home. No, wait, it's about how birds find their way home. Truth be told, it's both: the story of how an Englishman follows geese from their winter sanctuary in southern Texas to their breeding grounds in northern Canada and in the process discovers what Dorothy said on the silver screen more than 60 years ago - there's no place like home. William Fiennes' first book, is an unusual breed, a part-travelogue, part-bird book that almost works to perfection.

HAVRE DE GRACE -- As another October faded, there was a new look to the afternoon light. On a couple of mornings there had been a touch of frost, and the nights were filled with the sound of migratory geese. On an autumnal migration of my own, I set out in my old wooden boat for the Eastern Shore.It's a migration which raises eyebrows in Havre de Grace. ''Denton? You're taking your boat to Denton for the winter? That's a hundred miles away!'' Well, it's about 103, actually, and at the rate the Sea Horse chugs, it's a 10-hour trip.

BETHEL, N.Y. -- High above the tents and campfires and drum circles, where several thousand music lovers were celebrating the 26th anniversary of the original Woodstock festival, a gray banner bearing the grinning-skull logo of the Grateful Dead glowed against the night sky, illuminated by a flashlight.Its owner, Ronald De Graw, said he was letting the battery run down, allowing the symbol of his favorite band to fade into the darkness.It was something of a tribute to Jerry Garcia, the Grateful Dead's spiritual center and lead guitarist, who died Wednesday.

Turning aside calls for a ban on the commercial harvest of horseshoe crabs, Maryland officials are imposing a new limit on the catch in an attempt to help shorebirds that migrate up the Atlantic coast in spring. Effective April 1, fishermen will be required to catch two male horseshoe crabs for every female they keep, the Department of Natural Resources said yesterday. The rule is designed to increase the availability of horseshoe crab eggs on mid-Atlantic beaches when migratory shorebirds arrive in May and June.

More Baltimore countians packed up and moved out during the 1980s than moved in, and planners say the search for jobs in the Sun Belt, and affordable houses with yards in neighboring counties were probably the major reasons."

The Supreme Court's immigration decision is a step back from the brink, leaving much less room than many expected for state immigration enforcement. Although the justices blocked most provisions of Arizona's controversial 2010 policing law, they upheld the one of most concern to immigrant rights advocates: the section that requires local police to inquire about the immigration status of people they stop for other reasons and whom they suspect are in the country illegally. Even this part of the opinion is more tenuous than many expected, leaving open the possibility of future reconsideration by the court.

February may not seem like the peak time for bird-watching, but this past weekend proved to be the perfect time to learn about species and their surroundings - and to take part in a national effort to track bird populations. Robert E. Lee Park in Towson was the site of the "Bird Extravaganza," an activity aimed primarily at educating the public about the area's bird population. The program featured a display of live birds, opportunities for bird-watching hikes and outdoor-themed crafts at the scenic 453-acre park on Lake Roland.

What's that saying about leading a horse to water?  The latest effort to teach Maryland-bred whooping crane chicks to migrate to Florida for the winter has been called off because the endangered birds will no longer follow the ultralight aircraft leading them. Operation Migration , the nonprofit group that's been guiding captive-bred young cranes for a decade on their initial 1,300-mile flight from nesting grounds in Wisconsin, has called it quits this year in Alabama, 500 miles short of the destination.

My father would tell me that the earliest milestone to discern an approaching autumn was not the obvious leaf-color change but the slightly cooler temperatures of late August and early September mornings. It was not the daytime afternoon temperature, which could be the same as a midsummer July afternoon, but just the morning coolness. I have come to learn there is another telltale sign of fall - an annual migration of sorts. Not the common Canada goose migration, which is pretty enough in its own right, but a sometimes less-attractive American college student migration.

Like migratory birds, cruise ships regularly shift from one part of the world to another as the seasons shift -- from the Caribbean to Europe or South America or from Alaska or the West Coast to Asia or the South Pacific, for example. These usually twice annual exoduses are so huge that they could rival a naval armada, and they offer exceptional bargains, as well as lots of languid days at sea, and, occasionally, even unusual ports of call. Veteran cruise book author Kay Showker considers repositioning cruises "about the best value in cruising," compared with a regular cruise on the same ship.

The Johns Hopkins Carey Business School is relocating to the Legg Mason Tower, becoming the latest tenant to move from Baltimore's downtown to Harbor East's waterfront. The 24-story tower, which opened in the fall, is anchored by its namesake asset management firm and also includes the law firm of Hogan & Hartson and investment firm Oppenheimer & Co. In addition to the Carey School agreement, two letters of intent to lease up to 44,000 square feet have been signed and are under review, said L. Bruce Matthai, senior vice president and a principal at Colliers Pinkard, the tower's commercial broker.

Jewel-bright songbirds are nest-building now along the Patuxent River, at the end of their long migration. At Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary in Lothian, bird banders see more than a dozen of the 69 species that passed through the Texas woods this month. On a still, bright morning last week, the birders were surrounded by a tumult of birdsong. Elizabeth Sellers of Lorton, Va., singled out the songs of a half-dozen long-distance travelers, including a red-eyed vireo, whose trill is commonly translated as "Where are you?

THE YEARLY fall migration of the Monarch butterfly from North America to the balsam fir forests of Central Mexico, a 3,000-mile journey for millions of the creatures, is now ending. Welcoming the butterflies' arrival to winter quarters last week was a pioneering conservation agreement that triples their protected forest reserve to 140,000 acres and pays local farmers for their loss of logging rights. Over 30 years, about half the Monarch's high-altitude hibernating forest west of Mexico City has been lost to logging, threatening the species' viability.

KEMPTON, Pa. -- It begins before the leaves lose their green and ends after they have fallen to the ground: thousands of humans and thousands of birds of prey converging on a speck of granite to watch and be watched. Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, not far outside Allentown, Pa., rises up into the migratory superhighway used by hawks, eagles and falcons as they make their way to their wintering grounds down South. Soaring birds conserve their energy by using air currents deflected and warmed by the mountain, corkscrewing upward on rising thermal columns and drafting close to the slope to propel themselves onward.