Early WInter?

It is shaping up to be an early winter here in the mountains. If one pays close attention to the natural occurrences around us the indicators are all there. The elk are bugling, the robins and song birds have departed, squirrels are gathering non stop, the nights are slowly getting colder, hummingbirds are tanking up for the trip south as per the photos, and the caterpillars are fuzzy and the ants are working non stop storing tiny bits of food for their  long winter ahead.  From all indicators it is going to be an early and hard winter. 

Reminds me of an old joke:

An Indian chief was preparing for a fall council meeting and called the National Weather Service to find out about the weather. He was told that the winter was going to be cold, so he included this in his report to the counsel. The tribe began gathering fire wood.

The chief called back a couple of weeks later to make sure that his people were prepared and was told that it looked like it was going to be a harder winter than usual. He passed the word to his people to gather more wood.

A couple of weeks later, he was finalizing his winter plans and called the NWS again, and was told that it was going to be terrible. When he asked why they thought that, the man told him, “We’re not exactly sure, but the local Indians are gathering wood like crazy!”