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FOUR SEASONS BREEZE | OCTOBER 2023 41 Birding CLUB By now, all of us have experienced what counts for the beginning of fall in Southern California. It's not the warning of the first frost of the season, or a burst of yellow and gold on the maples, but the aisles full of Halloween candy that begin to appear in Rite Aid in August and the pumpkin spice lattes and muffins that show up on the Starbucks menu even before our end-of-summer barbecues on Labor Day. The coming seasonal changes hadn't appeared yet on the Sept. 2 bird walk of the Four Seasons Bird Club. Trails A and B were unusually quiet, and the birds we spotted were our year-round favorites: two Great Horned Owls, a Nuttall's Woodpecker, three Hummingbirds, two California Quail, a Spotted Towhee and a California Towhee, a Bewick's Wren, some Lesser Goldfinches and House Finches, all of them part of our regular family. But soon, migrating birds will change the landscape. Many of the bird species in North America will head south for the winter, flying up to 7,000 miles to their destinations. They travel for warmth and food sources, using the stars and even an amazing built-in magnetic compass to find their way. Some of them will pass through Beaumont on their journey, and others will winter here. Experienced birders in our group like Bill and Genie Cooper say we will soon spot some transient Warblers and Flycatchers, and Northern Flicker Woodpeckers, Robins and Cedar Waxwings will spend the winter here. We'll be looking for all of them in our yards and on the streets and walking paths. You can join the Birding Club on the first Saturday of the month at the trailhead for Trail A in The Lodge parking lot at 8 am. For more information, please contact Gerrie Karczynski at gerrie201516@gmail.com. ~ Kathy Hull Our Book Club selection for Oct. 10 is Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. Here is a brief description from Amazon.com: "In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant, and that her lover is married, she refuses to be bought. Instead, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. But her decision to abandon her home and to reject her son's powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations. Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan's finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee's complex and passionate characters — strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis — survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history." Our meetings are held on the second Tuesday of each month at 9:30 am in the RCN Room #3, and someone volunteers to lead the discussion about the book we have chosen for the month. For more information about the Four Seasons Book Club or to get on our mailing list, please contact me at michelesrosen@gmail.com. ~ Micki Rosen Book Club Quail at Four Seasons, picture by Linda Miller Nuttal's Woodpecker at Four Seasons, photo by Gerrie Karczynski Great Horned Owl at Four Seasons, picture by Gerrie Karczynski

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