Jack-o’-lanterns at the Sanctuary

As the air develops a more persistent chill this time of year, the leaves change color and fog settles over ponds and lakes in the morning. Birds fly south to warmer haunts for the winter, while bugs, frogs, and bats move underground to avoid the colder weather. As autumn progresses, our thoughts turn perhaps at first to cozy sweaters, apple orchards, and cider donuts before almost inevitably giving way to skeletons, scary movies, candy, and—for some inexplicable reason—carving faces into a specific orange squash.

A liminal time: The threshold between light and dark

In many ways, autumn is the polar opposite of spring. Maybe that’s not the most revolutionary thing to say, but it helps explain why folks start to obsess over ghouls, ghosts, and skeletons this time of year. Whereas spring is a time of renewed life and lengthening days, autumn is a period of decay, loss, and transition to dormancy. The birds and leaves are gone, the crops are harvested, and the days are getting shorter.

It should come as no surprise, then, that many of the traditions associated with Halloween have connections to death—though what pumpkins or trick-or-treating have to do with the dead is certainly less clear than celebrations of Día de los Muertos happening around the same time. Nevertheless, many Halloween symbols and activities can be traced back to ancient Irish and Scottish customs related to spirits, mortality, and surviving the long winter. Perhaps you’re having more bonfires (a mashup of the words “bone” and “fire”) to keep cold weather and evil spirits at bay, or maybe bobbing for apples, which are considered a symbol of abundance and long life. Trick-or-treating traces back to the practice of “souling” in the 1400s, where front-door prayers for the dead were rewarded with cakes. Related is the Gaelic tradition of “guising” (think “disguise”), where folks dressed as souls and spirits went door-to-door asking for food and threatening mischief if none was provided.

What about jack-o’-lanterns?

As with so many other Halloween staples, the practice of carving pumpkins can be traced back to Scottish, Irish, and other Gaelic traditions. Meant to either represent evil spirits or ward them off, carved vegetables would be set on windowsills or carried around for light and dramatic effect while guising. However, since pumpkins are native to the Americas, jack-o’-lanterns were traditionally carved from various root vegetables found in the British Isles like turnip or rutabaga. Only once Scottish and Irish immigrants began arriving in North America did the pumpkin take hold as the icon of Halloween.

Celebrate with us!

As we pass through the veil of autumn, everyone at Kellogg Bird Sanctuary gets to celebrate this natural time of transition. Come see the raptors and game birds show off their own meticulously crafted jack-o’-lanterns!  Enjoy these trail cam photos of our Northern Bobwhites, Jack and Betty, from last year in the gallery below. Look for this season’s creations out in our exhibits starting on Oct. 29, 2025! 

 

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Caleb Krueger is a Ph.D. student in the Janzen Lab at the W.K. Kellogg Biological Station and a 2025-26 science education and outreach fellow. He studies the endangered spotted turtle to improve conservation and management efforts, and he also studies the evolution of sex-determining mechanisms in reptiles, where incubation temperatures often determine whether eggs produce males or females.