Where are my red wriggers?

I had to be away from home (New York State) all summer and I just now (October 10th) went looking in my compost pile, which hasn't been added to since June. I was happy to see beautiful black gold compost, but dismayed that I couldn't find any of my beloved worms.

Could they have all died, or just left looking for new food? Will they come back if I start adding more food waste?

If your compost doesn't have recognizable chunks, then the worms probably did their job of composting it, and then moved on to find more food. They don't want to eat their own castings, so they can't live in pure castings. If you add more food scraps and carbon material though, they may return. If possible, I would build a new compost pile right next to the old one, so any hidden worms will have an easy time finding the new food source.

If it has started to get cold up where you are, they may have burrowed down into the soil under your compost pile to stay warm. The only likely way they would have died is if birds or some other predator had discovered them, but in that case you would have found your compost scattered all over from some predator digging/ scratching it up to get to the worms.

Congratulations on the lovely compost!

Hmm, that makes sense. I guess I will remove the compost and add some food scraps and see what happens. Thanks.