"When Twitcher set out on this column he was in the midsummer of his years, a youthful reprobate with cheap binoculars and a blank notebook. Today he has reached about late septermber on life's calendar, the season of mellow fruitfulness and bending apple trees. Frosts have not yet nipped his upper branches, but his leaves are turning and the harvest is in. And so, now that poor old Twitcher's sun is past its zenith, we offer his autumn almanac, which, as ever, is in alphabetical form."