Just Passing Through

The soybeans have been off the field for over a week now.  Our field looks somehow bigger, and yet, smaller at the same time, without it's cover of vegetation.  We can once more look out across it and see that it rolls, it isn't truly flat like it looks during the growing season.

The sound of combines is in the air.  Beans are done, but all around the neighborhood, the farmers are starting on their corn--the grain corn, as silage corn was all chopped in September.  That's how you know which corn a farmer is working on, silage or grain.  If he says "Yeah, we're chopping corn," he's doing silage.  If he says "Yeah, we're cutting corn," it's grain, either to sell by whatever the going rate per bushel is or to store for feeding his own stock this winter.  

Most of the birds have migrated by now.  The song birds, long since moved on to warmer climes. Geese fly over in big V's, sometimes stopping in the field for the night.  They like to eat up whatever soybeans the harvester dropped. 

Sandhill cranes, too, pause here briefly on their snowbird journey.  I was able to get some decent pictures of the most recent group to drop by.