Nothing breeds anticipation in a birder's heart like experience.
With the passage of years, we come to expect events in the world of birds to fall pretty much into synch with a master schedule. And, by and large, these events do. Classically, birds move north in spring and south in fall but the members of each species do so in a manner distinct from every other species. Echoing the thoughts of Henry Beston in The Outermost House, each species on Earth comprises an individual nation, neither lesser nor greater than any other, and yet at the same time apart from all others. October has long been one of my favorite months for birding.