On the edge of #3 Pasture I find a returned Marsh Wren that lets me approach within a couple paces, close enough that I can see the white stripes on its back. I also find the place in the fence on the road (well, one of the places in that fence) where Mycha the Cow took advantage of how the whole line is being buried in the mud and rubble of sheet flood after sheet flood. The top wire is now so low that Mycha just springs over with ease and nonchalant grace, to vacuum up the mesquite beans that those other, mere mortal cows who don’t have the nerve to follow (gracias a Dios!) can only dream about getting to. I haze her up the long road stretch to The Green Gate, she traipses back in, I pull up to The Stockpond and lose Mycha’s grand, teeth-grinding irritation in a water’s edge once again so alive with birds that I don’t know what to look at; I’m still so worked up and shaking over the chase with that cow that I can’t hold the binoculars still for a while anyway. Once I calm down, the birds all set themselves before me beautifully: pairs of Wilson’s Warblers, pairs of Black-headed Grosbeaks, sets of Lazuli Buntings, kingbirds, a bright female Bullock’s Oriole, Bell’s Vireos, an Orange-crowned Warbler, Abert’s Towhees, Blue Grosbeaks, a Nashville Warbler, immature Western Tanager, a Black Phoebe, McGillivray’s Warbler, a Swallow bombs in and bombs out too fast to see what species. A pair of Lucy’s Warblers are the last I’ll see in what seems with them a true farewell-to-Summer (I thought they’d all gone by now, it’s been so long since I’ve seen or heard any.) The flock of Brewer’s Blackbirds passes overhead.

The cows have been set to graze down the bermudagrass in #2(north) Pasture, to make easier its preparation for the planting of winter small cereals, as wheat, oats, barley and rye plants are called when used for grazing. Another Marsh Wren is there, and from the uncultivated other side of the River fence slides along another snake, who crosses bare patches of ground and pops down into a hole in the tufts of bermuda. This Ring-necked Snake is more mellow than yesterday’s Rattler (though it, too, is said to be venomous) and a handsome reptile it is: lead gray, with an orange band around its neck worn like a fine piece of jewelry.

The Monsoon, the Summer, end with a bang literally, as thunderstorm cells sweep in and over the Mason Pastures …