What to look for in nature in Pennsylvania this October

When does fall color peak in Pennsylvania, region by region?

When is the best time to watch hawks at Hawk Mountain?

When do the elk bugle at Benezette?

Which birds are arriving, leaving or passing through?

• Ruby-throated hummingbirds: the last stragglers

  Most gone by early September; stragglers into October · Feeders statewide

  The Game Commission’s note says males may start leaving in early August and females and young stay until late August or early September, “with occasional stragglers into October or later.” A feeder left up through October does no harm and feeds the late ones; any hummingbird after mid-October is worth a dated note in the journal.

• Monarchs: the tail of the migration at Presque Isle

  Peak passed in mid-September; the tail runs through October · Presque Isle State Park at Erie; lakeshores and ridge tops

  Monarch Watch’s timetable runs from September 3–15 at 43° north to September 8–20 at 41° and September 14–26 at 39°, so Erie’s peak falls in the first half of September and Philadelphia’s about a week later. October is the tail. The Presque Isle peninsula concentrates what is left: monarchs are reluctant to cross open water, so they build up along the Lake Erie shore and follow it southwest, crossing on calm mornings and blowing back on a south wind. The Tom Ridge Environmental Center lists monarch migration among the park’s October sights, and the park has tagged monarchs for several years; check its DCNR events page for any October sessions. Report any October roost to Journey North.

• Juncos, white-throated sparrows and kinglets

  Arriving from mid-September into November · Statewide; feeders, hedgerows, woods edges

  Dark-eyed juncos, the “snowbirds,” reach their winter grounds between mid-September and November; white-throated sparrows come late and gradually, moving at night; the two kinglets are in the hedgerows through the month. The first junco under the feeder is a date worth keeping; Project FeederWatch opens on November 1.

• Waterfowl at Presque Isle and Erie National Wildlife Refuge; swans later

  October into early winter; tundra swans from mid-November · Presque Isle; Erie National Wildlife Refuge at Guys Mills; Middle Creek later

  Presque Isle’s October list is waterfowl migration, monarchs and foliage; the tip of Gull Point is closed to walkers until November 30 to protect shorebirds, so look from the platform on the Gull Point trail. At Erie National Wildlife Refuge in Crawford County, where more than 40 percent of the land is wetland, the migrations run September through November. Tundra swans are not an October bird: the Game Commission says the flocks head south from late September and reach the wintering grounds from mid-November to mid-December, most of them on the lower Susquehanna and at Middle Creek. Middle Creek itself is quiet in October: its Wildlife Drive is open March 1 to September 30, and the famous flights, more than 100,000 snow geese in recent years and a record 200,000 in 2018, come in February and March.

When is the first freeze, and where does the first snow fall?

How much daylight does Pennsylvania lose in October?

Is October a wet month in Pennsylvania, and what will El Niño do to the winter?

What is in the sky over Pennsylvania this October?

• The Hunter’s Moon

  Full at 12:12 a.m. Monday, October 26; rises before sunset on Sunday the 25th · Everywhere; find a low eastern horizon

  The full moon after the Harvest Moon. In Pittsburgh on Sunday, October 25 the moon rises at 5:51 p.m. and the sun sets at 6:26; in Philadelphia, moonrise is 5:32 and sunset 6:07. Watch it come up big and orange over the eastern ridges. Whatever some almanacs say, it is not a supermoon: this full moon does not fall near perigee.

• Orionid meteors

  Pre-dawn, October 21 and 22 · Anywhere dark; face south-southeast

  The American Meteor Society lists the shower from October 2 through November 7, peaking on the mornings of October 21 and 22 at 10 to 20 meteors an hour in a normal year. In Pittsburgh the waxing gibbous moon is down by 2:33 a.m. on the 21st and 3:38 on the 22nd (2:13 and 3:18 in Philadelphia; 3:37 in Erie and 3:29 in State College on the 22nd), which leaves a few dark hours before the sky starts to brighten, well ahead of civil twilight at about 7:10 a.m. in Pittsburgh and 6:50 in Philadelphia.

• Draconid meteors and the darkest weekend

  Evening of Thursday, October 8; new moon Saturday, October 10 · Look north after dark

  EarthSky expects about 10 an hour at best under a dark sky, and unlike most showers this one is richest in the evening, when its radiant in the Dragon stands highest; the peak falls on the night of October 8, and the waning crescent moon does not come up until the small hours. The new moon two days later makes the weekend of October 9–11 the darkest of the month, at Cherry Springs State Park in Potter County or on any hilltop away from town.

• Saturn all night

  Opposition October 4; the Moon beside it October 23–24 · Rising in the east at sunset

  Saturn reaches opposition on October 4: it comes up in the east as the sun goes down, stays up all night, and outshines everything around it in the faint star fields where Pisces meets Cetus. Its rings are tilted about 12 degrees toward us this fall. On the evenings of October 23 and 24 the waxing gibbous moon passes close by.

• Venus leaves, Jupiter and Mars take the morning

  Venus gone after the first days; Jupiter and Mars before dawn · West at dusk; east at dawn

  Venus is sinking into the western twilight and, this far north, is lost after the first few evenings of October; it reaches inferior conjunction, between us and the sun, on October 23. The mornings belong to Jupiter, bright and high in the east before dawn, with Mars above it; on the morning of October 11 Mars crosses the Beehive cluster in Cancer, a fine binocular view.

• The moon hides Jupiter

  About 4:21 to 5:26 a.m. EDT, Tuesday, October 6 · Low in the east, 15 to 30 degrees up

  A rare event, and the whole state is inside the zone. The waning crescent moon rises at about 2:30 a.m. in Philadelphia and 2:50 in Pittsburgh. Its bright edge covers Jupiter at 4:21 to 4:23 a.m. everywhere in Pennsylvania, with the moon 15 to 19 degrees up; Jupiter comes back out from the dark edge about an hour later, at 5:22 in Pittsburgh and Erie, 5:25 in Harrisburg and 5:26 in Philadelphia, with the moon 27 to 31 degrees up in a sky still fully dark. Those are the International Occultation Timing Association’s predictions for each city; your own minute depends on where you stand, so be watching ten minutes early. The reappearance at the dark edge is the show, and binoculars are enough.

What is blooming, turning and dropping?

• Witch hazel, the last flower of the year

  Mid-October to mid-November · Every county; the understory of moist woods, ravines and streambanks

  Common witch hazel opens its ragged yellow flowers as its own leaves turn and fall, from October into December with a peak from mid-October to mid-November. Penn State’s Arboretum calls it the last native Pennsylvania plant to flower each year, and it grows in every county. The flowers smell faintly of citrus on a mild afternoon and curl up in the cold without dying, and last year’s capsules on the same branch shoot their two black seeds several yards.

• Asters and goldenrod to the frost

  Through October to the first hard freeze · Roadsides, meadows, woods edges

  New England aster, white wood aster, heath aster and the goldenrods carry the late bees and the last monarchs to the first hard freeze; the Pennsylvania Native Plant Society’s pick for the season, white wood aster, flowers from July through October and feeds the winter sparrows in seed. Ragweed, not goldenrod, is the sneeze: goldenrod pollen is heavy and carried by insects.

• Acorns, beechnuts and hickories: the mast

  Dropping now · Oak and beech woods statewide

  The Game Commission lists acorns, hickory nuts and beechnuts among the foods bears eat heavily in autumn, deer add acorns and apples to their diet in fall, and squirrels, jays, turkeys and mice take the rest. A heavy mast year keeps bears in the woods; a poor one sends them to bird feeders. Tally the acorns beneath a single oak and date the note; the seeds-pods-and-cones plate in the journal is for exactly this.

• Apples and pumpkins

  Harvest through October · Adams County orchards; farms statewide

  Adams County’s orchards around Biglerville and Arendtsville are the center of Pennsylvania apple country, and the National Apple Harvest Festival runs the first two weekends of October, October 3–4 and 10–11, at the South Mountain Fairgrounds, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays and to 5 p.m. Sundays. Pumpkins are ready across the state; Bald Eagle State Park’s Punkin’ Chunkin’ festival is Saturday, October 17, and Little Buffalo State Park holds its apple festival the same day.

What are the bears, deer, trout and bugs doing?

• Black bears eating for winter

  Heavy feeding through October; pregnant females den in mid- to late November · Statewide, about 19,000 of them

  “In autumn, bears eat heavily to fatten themselves for winter,” the Game Commission says, on acorns, hickory nuts, beechnuts, late berries, corn and whatever a yard offers; pregnant females den first, in mid- to late November, and males a few weeks later. Bird feeders, garbage cans and grills draw them, and with about 19,000 bears in the state, October is the month to take the feeder down in bear country and put it back after Thanksgiving.

• Deer: the rut is coming, not here

  Rubs and scrapes from mid-October; breeding peaks in mid-November · Statewide, suburbs included

  Breeding “begins as early as September and can last into late January,” the Game Commission says, but “reaches its peak in mid-November.” October is the rubs-and-scrapes month, when bucks strip bark from saplings and paw the ground under an overhanging branch they mark with their facial glands. Deer move more as the breeding season approaches and road collisions rise with them; dawn and dusk on wooded roads are the hours to slow down. Archery deer season is open statewide from October 3 (see the safety notes).

• Steelhead into the Erie creeks

  From mid-September with the first big rains; strong through October · Elk, Walnut and Twenty Mile creeks and ten other Erie County tributaries

  Lake Erie’s steelhead school off the creek mouths from about mid-September and run up the tributaries whenever a rain lifts the flow, so the fall run is only as good as the fall rain: a dry October keeps them in the lake, and a soaking storm fills Elk and Walnut creeks with fish and, soon after, anglers. The Fish and Boat Commission lists thirteen steelhead tributaries and requires a Lake Erie permit; Trout Run at Fairview is a nursery water, closed to fishing, where the fish can be watched from the bank.

• Brook trout on the redds, and 114,700 stocked trout

  Spawning from mid-September into November; stocking from October 1 · Headwater streams; 92 stocked waters in October

  Pennsylvania’s state fish spawns in fall, from mid-September through November, and in October the small mountain streams show it: males in orange bellies and white-edged fins, females digging redds, pale cleared patches of gravel in riffles six to eighteen inches deep. Cross at bedrock or dark cobble, keep the dog out of the riffle, and fish from the bank; one boot in a redd kills the eggs. The Fish and Boat Commission’s fall stocking starts Thursday, October 1: about 114,700 adult rainbow, brown and brook trout into 117 stream sections and lakes through mid-December, 86,100 of them in October into 92 waters; the county schedules are on fishandboat.com.

• Spotted lanternflies laying eggs

  Late September until a hard freeze · Southeast and spreading; tree of heaven and any flat surface

  The females are laying now: masses of 30 to 50 eggs under a gray, mud-like coating on trees, rocks, fence posts, cars and lawn furniture, from September until the hard freezes kill the adults, with hatch in late April to June. Penn State Extension’s advice for October is to scrape the masses into a bag of rubbing alcohol, check the car and the outdoor gear before driving out of the quarantine, and report sightings beyond it to the hotline, 1-888-422-3359.

• Woolly bears crossing the road

  October afternoons · Roads, trails, sidewalks

  The banded woolly bear, larva of the Isabella tiger moth, crosses roads in October looking for a place under bark or a log to spend the winter; it overwinters as a caterpillar, freezes with a glycerol antifreeze, thaws in spring, feeds a little and pupates. The folklore that a wide brown band means a mild winter does not hold up: the band reflects the caterpillar’s age and how good its growing season was. Count the bands anyway and write the number down; that is data even when the prophecy is not.

What can families do outside in Pennsylvania this month?

Safety notes for October in Pennsylvania