Today’s the day for spooks and ghosts.  Its colors are black and orange, the black of night and witches’ hats, the orange of glowing embers and the harvest moon.

Why aren’t our black-and-orange birds associated with Halloween?  Probably because Baltimore orioles, American redstarts and Blackburnian warblers are small and harmless and they’ve migrated out of North America by late October.  Instead the smart and crafty crows and ravens are symbols of this spooky holiday.  Black is in and the crows are in town.

For the color orange you can’t beat pumpkins.  Did you know that pumpkins are native to the Americas but they’re now grown around the world?  The major pumpkin-growing countries are the U.S., Mexico, India and China.  Pennsylvania is one of the top five pumpkin producing states so when I buy a pumpkin I’m “buying local.”

This Halloween we get a bonus.  We’ll turn our clocks back tonight and get an extra hour of sleep.  The bad news is that the sun will set at 5:07pm on Sunday and the black of night will descend upon us an hour earlier.

Happy Halloween!

(photo by Chuck Tague)