September 2024 - Anticipating Autumn: A Bird Lover’s Afternoon Tea

Bird Dance
 
Unless we listen, we will never hear them calling,
Tirelessly, from their deep, throbbing hearts.
Robins perched in leafy oaks
Sing an old song. Woodpeckers, their red
Crests haloed in sunlight,
Sound out their annunciation.
The splendid jays, standing on fence posts,
Lecture us in bolder notes than any teacher.
Even little finches in cherry trees chirp and keep
Chirping through the golden morning,
Even until the close of the day.
Quail, shy families hiding in brush
And dusty places, they speak to us too
If we will hear.
And if we lift our eyes to the skies
When the first oleander falls, the geese, the cranes,
The sandpipers, the plovers the loons and the Arctic terns
Sing a symphony among the stars, chant for us
As they soar past the horizon in the season’s shift,
“Look up! Join us, and dance!”

 
The annual North American autumn migration of birds reaches its peak in September and October each year. During this time, three hundred million birds begin the long flight to warmer areas with longer hours of daylight and a more abundant food supply to the south. Scientists tell us that this seasonal migration has been occurring on planet Earth for hundreds of thousand of years. And during this time of energetic flight, birds exhibit an astounding level of stamina and directional perception, often returning to the same location where they have lived during previous winters.
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Geese gather by the
Thousands at the lake, adding
Fat for the next flight.

 
The star of this massive seasonal exodus is the Arctic Tern, who flies 90,000 miles from Canada to South America. Thousands of Canada Geese live in the Great Lakes region, and those who migrate follow one of four “flyways,” or bird highways: The Atlantic Flyway, following the eastern coast of the United States, The Mississippi Flyway, following the river, the Central Flyway, south across the Rocky Mountains or the Pacific Flyway, west of the Rockies and along the Pacific coastline.
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The golden plover,
After her long flight, lands
On Kaaawa beach.

 
Anyone who loves birds can easily observe them in their migratory patterns at this time of year. According to the Audubon website, the six best places to view migrating birds are:
 
Great Salt Lake, Utah, avocets, stilts, sandpipers, ducks and later in autumn, swans
 
Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park, warblers, thrushes and hawks
 
Cape May, New Jersey, shorebirds, warblers, hawks, robins, sparrows, peregrine falcons
 
Monterey Bay, California, Sabine’s gulls, black-footed albatrosses and other long-distance migrators
 
Izembek Lagoon, Alaska, emperor geese, Taverner’s cackling geese, Steller’s eiders, sandpipers
 
Hawk Ridge, Duluth, Minnesota, raptors, broad-winged hawks, peaking in September and red-tailed hawks peaking in October.
 

If you live close to one of these locations, it might be fun to pack a picnic lunch and spend a lovely early autumn afternoon bird watching with friends. I have loved birds all my life and write poems about birds all the time. Others of you might enjoy painting or sketching birds, or simply including avian motifs in your home décor or on your clothing. My husband Wayne loves photographing birds. I admit that I am not the kind of disciplined bird watcher who keeps a notebook of all the species he or she has viewed and learns to identify all the bird calls, though I think this might be a satisfying and certainly harmless vocation.
​

 
Night herons surround
The old fishermen at the
Canal at twilight.

 
However, bird watching is not just a form of entertainment. Founded in 1905, the National Audubon Society, according to its website, “…protects birds and the places they need, today and tomorrow, throughout the Americas, using science, advocacy, education and on-the -ground conservation.” Interestingly, it was two women from Boston, Harriet Hemenway and Minna B. Hall, who laid the groundwork for the bird protection movement in America. Horrified by the number of shore birds who were killed for their plumes and feathers to decorate hats in the late Victorian era, these two women, in 1896, organized a series of Afternoon Teas to convince Boston society women to stop wearing hats with bird feathers. How delightful that Afternoon Tea has contributed to the safety and well being of our avian friends!
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In the warm midday,
A cardinal lands in the pink
Plumeria tree.

 
Today the Audubon Society publishes Audubon Magazine, a cornerstone of environmental journalism and photography and maintains a catalogue of over 800 North American Birds. Through the Annual Christmas Bird Count, which began in 1900, members of local Audubon Society chapters count the number of birds in their local regions, aiding in habitat conservation and identifying vulnerable species. Through the efforts of Harriet, Minna and those who followed, there is now federal legislation protecting water birds from plume hunting and protecting all migratory birds in the United States and Canada.
 

 
On September’s dry
Golden hills, wild turkeys and
Red roses still thrive.

 
Even if you do not live near any of the famous bird sanctuaries listed above, birds are nevertheless all around you. All you need to do is watch and listen, as my poem “Bird Dance” suggests. Birds bring lyrical sounds, color and joy into every corner of our world. And in September we can learn from the birds, look as the birds do, for the subtle signs of fall, cooler mornings and evenings, earlier twilights and later dawns—time for the harvest, time to get up and fly away to a warmer and lighter place.
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An egret soars past
Ala Moana and lands
In a banyan tree.

 
To prepare for your last of summer or first of autumn, Bird Lovers’ Afternoon Tea, you might want to review the menu on this website for “An Autumn Afternoon Tea,” in the Afternoon Tea and the Four Seasons section of The Tea Book. This menu includes autumn produce, spices and flavorings, including cinnamon, cardamom, maple, apples and pumpkin. Another option in the calendar section of The Tea Book is our September Ozark Farm Harvest Tea. The Ozarks, where I was born, are a bird-lover’s paradise, filled with red-tailed hawks, Great blue herons, American kestrels, sparrows, cardinals, robins, golden eagles, Screech owls and whip-poor-wills. This area is also a place where simple home cooking has reached its zenith. Our Ozark Tea menu offers a variety of basic and truly delicious picnic and tea party foods that could be in enjoyed in a park, a garden, a lake side filled with birds or even your back porch. These are the foods I enjoyed as a child—peanut butter and honey sandwiches, pimiento cheese sandwiches, deviled eggs and corn bread.
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A toddler chases
A pair of gray doves away
From the monkey bars.

 
When I wrote this menu, I included a complete Planning Guide along with the recipes, so that one person could prepare this Afternoon Tea at home and serve it to friends indoors or out with the level of relaxation and elegant simplicity that Ozark foods deserve.
 
But if you only have time for a quick pot of tea or coffee and a few really good cookies to enjoy with your friends as you witness the autumn migration and listen to the birds in the bushes and trees around you, I’m sharing a very basic but astonishingly satisfying cookie recipe, my husband’s very favorite: Brown Sugar Cookies.

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Brown Sugar Cookies
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My husband Wayne found this recipe on the website: dinnerthendessert.com and begged me to bake these cookies for him. Sabrina Snyder is listed as the author. The instructions are pretty minimal, and I have made a few tweaks to the recipe, but the secret seems to be browning most of the butter in a skillet to create the deep butter flavor that makes these dark brown sugar cookies so special. I also added a little pinch of sea salt to the top of each cookie to create a salted caramel effect. These are the chewy in the middle, crunchy on the outside sugar cookies that we all crave but can never find in a grocery store or even in a bakery. Like all-American Chocolate Chip Cookies, these Brown Sugar Cookies are best on the day they have been baked and are still ever so slightly warm. They will still be good for two or three days, but they will harden, and the chewiness will disappear. Be sure to store them at room temperature in a tightly covered container. This recipe creates 30-34 fairly large cookies, so the process will go more quickly if you use two parchment-lined cookie sheets. However, it takes a while to form the dough balls and roll them in sugar, so I found that the first batch was almost done by the time I finished shaping and rolling the second batch, so I just used one cookies sheet.

• 14 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 ¾ sticks)
• ¼ cup white sugar
• 2 cups packed dark brown sugar
• 2 cups flour plus 2 tablespoons
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ¼ teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon Kosher salt
• 1 large egg, at room temperature
• 1 large egg yolk
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
•                   Additional white sugar for rolling the cookie dough
•                   Pinches of sea salt crystals

 
Special Equipment: 1 or two baking sheets, parchment paper, skillet, whisk, rubber spatula, 2 large mixing bowls, 1 tablespoon measuring spoon, dinner plate, small shallow bowl, disposable kitchen gloves, offset spatula, air-tight covered container for storage.
 
Makes: 30-34 cookies
 
Preheat Oven to 350 Degrees F

1. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. In a skillet, melt 10 tablespoons of butter over medium-high heat. Whisk the butter constantly until it starts to brown, about 3-4 minutes, taking care not to burn the butter.
2. Pour the browned butter into a bowl and add the remaining butter. Stir until all the butter is melted and set aside.
3. In another bowl, whisk together the white sugar, ¼ cup of brown sugar, all of the flour and the baking soda and baking powder until the mixture is well combined.
4. Add the remaining brown sugar and salt to the bowl containing the browned and melted butter. Whisk until smooth. Then whisk in the whole egg, egg yolk and vanilla until the mixture is smooth.
5. Using a rubber spatula, slowly add the flour mixture to the butter and egg mixture and mix slowly until no flour is visible and a uniform dough has formed. Cover a dinner plate with additional white sugar. Place a small amount of sea salt crystals into a small bowl.
6. Using disposable kitchen gloves, use a 1-tablespoon measure to create balls of dough and roll each in the white sugar to coat. Place the balls of dough on the prepared cookie sheet about an inch apart and flatten each ball slightly with the palm of your hand.
7. Sprinkle the top of each dough ball with a small pinch of salt crystals. Bake for 12-14 minutes until the cookies begin to set and are just starting to brown around the edges.  Do not overbake, or the cookies will be crunchy and not soft in the center.
8. Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack. When cooled, remove to a flat surface, (a large piece of parchment placed on the kitchen counter,) with an offset spatula. When cooled, serve immediately or store for 2-3 days in an airtight container.