LETS HEAR IT FOR JUNE!

Our meadow, uncut, has abundant wildflowers

“And what is so rare as a day in June?”

James Russell Lowell

“June is bustin' out all over!

All over the meadow and the hill!

Buds're bustin' outa bushes

And the rompin' river pushes

Ev'ry little wheel that wheels beside the mill!”

Rodgers and Hammerstein, “Carousel”

                                June, moon, spoon, tune, etc.

Long after I stopped thinking about June solely as the month that school ends, it was just the time before the summer heat got serious, the time the garden still looked good before weeds and insects took over, when water everywhere–ocean, lakes, pools–was still a bit cold for swimming, and of course it was the official beginning of bug season.  That was about it.  Not my favorite month, if I thought about it at all.  Some years we even kind of threw the month away, picking June as a good time to be elsewhere, far away from home, out of the country even, to get ahead of the tourist season, because what was so compelling about being at home in June?

 But now…well, there’s so much more going on.


DUCK TIME

This morning Ken woke me up to let me know he spotted the ducks and ducklings I’d been on the lookout for in the pond.  I got out of bed and grabbed the binoculars and my camera.  There they were:  five ducklings and two females.  At first the ducklings were snuggled together in a fuzzy mass in the tall grass at the water’s edge while the two females preened and dunked in the middle of the pond.  One adult female was a mallard, the other a merganser.  A bit later all the ducks were together, swimming.  But whose ducklings were they?  When I checked my photo later the camera made it clear the ducklings were mallards and hence belonged to the mallard female.  What, then, was the merganser doing there?

An illustration of a Hooded Merganser male

It was about a month ago that we first saw a mating pair of hooded mergansers (the male is wildly colorful with a shovel-shaped head and easily identifiable, the female considerably plainer) in our pond.  They came and went over a period of days.  We had also seen a mating pair of mallards at an earlier time.  But because the female merganser reappeared several times recently, once floating next to what looked like five ducklings, we naturally assumed the ducklings were hers.  After I saw the group for the first time, I assumed they–mergansers–had nested somewhere nearby.  I peered beneath the branches that sweep over the water on the more secluded end of the pond that I figured might serve a refuge for a nest.  No sign of any nest.  It wasn't until later that I learned hooded mergansers nest in tall tree cavities, of all places, the ducklings often beginning their post-nest life with a 20 or 30 foot fall to the ground.  What’s more, these tree nests may be as far as a half mile or so from the nearest water.

The ducklings are just a fuzzy mass at the edge of the pond

 I was sure I saw the merganser swimming with the ducklings (the same ducklings?) just a day ago.  Are the two ducks sharing maternal duties?   Or do they both have ducklings?  If the female merganser had ducklings, did she lose them?  I wish we knew.  After an hour or so of messing around on the pond they sailed under our bridge and did not reappear that day.  (That is to say, not while we were looking.)  The grasses are thick at that end, but flowing water peters out and becomes only a seep. Where did they go?  Into the reeds?  Into the meadow?  Or did they swim back later, unnoticed, toward the forest?  Yesterday the female mallard seemed to be in sole charge, and we watched as she moved across the corner of the lawn encircled by ducklings, and then they all disappeared into the tall grass.  Where was the merganser?

The mallard female with her brood of five

We could try and learn the answers to all these questions, but the minor events of daily life intervene.  I think about how someone like nature writer Berndt Heinrich (noted for his study of ravens, among other birds) sat for hours, days, weeks, notebook in hand, observing and waiting, waiting and observing.  If we did that to even a small extent, we would know the answers to some of these simple questions.   But there are many other happenings to see, and besides, it’s usually time for breakfast.



BIRD TIME

We have had a bird feeder behind the house near our windows (well, about ten feet to 15 feet away; we move it around) all year, and it’s always attracted masses of birds.  But this spring things have gotten crazy.  The gentle nuthatches, goldfinches, titmice, have given way to a more confident larger birds:  red-winged blackbirds, grackles, pileated woodpeckers, bluejays, and red-crested grosbeaks.  Some species (blackbirds, for instance) can be aggressive, but we have noticed that others, like grosbeaks, are not intimidated.  We are particularly fond of the grosbeaks, maybe because there is a grosbeak nest with three babies above the porch doorway.

Three baby grosbeaks in a nicely decorated nest

This eager robin made her nest in the solar panel while the electrician was
still at work; hanging from the nest are shreds of an old tarp

Sometimes bird activity becomes frenzied.  Birds fly at the windows, and lately a woodpecker (why only a woodpecker, I’ve no idea) has taken to landing right on the window screen and staying there, looking inside before flying off again.  After several birds hit our windows during the year on the feeder side of the house (body count:  only one, remarkably) we decided to keep the screens up year-round.  Earlier this week some large bird slammed into the screen, enough to do some real damage to the mesh, apparently not to the bird (no body located).  We’ve invited more species:  two newly placed hummingbird feeders on the front porch need refilling nearly every other day. Each is hit by a single hummingbird at a time, probably a territorial thing, one choosing the feeder on the left, the other on the right.  There are many avian territorial battles going on around us, but what we see of it is only a suggestion of the actual skirmishes and rivalries playing out.

Our shredded screen; the hole is about 5 inches long

FLOWER TIME  (GRASSES, TOO)


Our grassy meadow is growing tall.  So too are the wildflowers:  purple vetch, clover, buttercups and more.  Last year our field was not hayed until late July.  As long as it’s cut at least once in the summer this is fine with us, as it allows meadow-nesting species time to fledge.  In fact, to protect the threatened ground-nesting bobolink, an environmental project here in Vermont is offering farmers a subsidy if they withhold haying until the bobolinks (ground-nesting and endangered) have safely left the nest.  Early hay provides the most nutritious feed, so refraining until July incurs an actual monetary loss to the farmer.

Without a mowed path, the going would be tough

It was a rainy and mostly cool month.  Still is, actually, although June is nearly over.  Rain set local haying operations back after an optimistic start in gorgeous dry weather.  The first cuttings of hay began early in the month but then delays set in because of rain.   What applies to grass is also true of corn, in a way, as corn is also a grass, albeit an annual one.  A column in our local paper describes the situation this way:  “In June the young plants are still becoming established.  A wet spring…can result in a shallow root system (especially in our Addison County clay soils) so if things dry up later the roots won’t be able to reach the moisture.  Corn requires hot, humid days and warm nights for rapid growth…”   This is dairy country, and cows generally are fed half grain and the rest corn and grass silage, silage being the rest of the corn plant minus the corn.  An acre of corn, by the way, will feed a herd of 100 milking cows for about 12 days.*  

The showiest flowers bloom in the month of June.  There can’t be enough peonies!  If only their blooms lasted longer.  Peonies I planted two years ago have taken until now to become abundant bloomers.  Understanding more about peonies now (my previous lack of knowledge the result of not being able to grow plants that love sun, like peonies), I have learned that these lush flowers have no odor, or no pleasant odor.  Most peonies–those gorgeous colors, the subtle variations–are hybrids.  The price paid for hybridization is the failure of fragrance.  I read somewhere that no-fragrance roses have been created, too.  This seems a high a price to pay for appearance.



REPTILE TIME

The frogs are trilling (tree frogs) and gulping (bullfrogs) again.  They are especially loud on warm humid nights, of which we have had several as June yields to July.  What we have noticed more this season than last is the number of snakes, notably all harmless.  Female garter snakes like to bask in the sun to optimize the temperature for their developing offspring so it’s no surprise to find them in the garden, near the patio’s stone wall, and numerous places near the house on sunny days.  They will give birth until July and early August.**  Only once so far have we seen a milk snake, a bit less benign looking, but harmless nonetheless.  Both milk and garter snakes are common around here, frequenting garden, stone walls, barnyards.  The only poisonous snake in the state of Vermont where there are eleven snake species in all, is the Eastern Timber Rattlesnake, considered endangered and found in only a few areas of western Rutland County, just south of our county.  Of the eleven, the Eastern Ribbonsnake, Eastern Ratsnake, North American Racer are rare (read: threatened) and the Smooth Greensnake, and Ring-Necked Snake are at “moderate risk” due to restricted range or recent decline.  The chief enemy of snakes–big surprise–is man.

A basking milk snake

Snapping turtles are abundant, however.  Last year we spotted one, a big one, in the middle of the road between here and Middlebury.  Ken stopped the car to move the turtle from the road.  It was so heavy he just managed to lift the thing, holding it carefully away from his body with his hands kind of amid ships so to speak, to keep them away from its snapping angry mouth at the end of a surprisingly long neck.  He managed to carry it to the side of the road and returned to the car.  But Ken, I said, you have the turtle facing the wrong way.  It was about to start heading across the road again.  Ken had to pick the huge creature up one more time and face it in the right direction, into which it finally started to move.

Having left our pond, this  snapping turtle is crawling off toward the forest

I always assumed there could be one of these creatures in our pond.  In the summer it’s too muddy to see the bottom so we could never know for sure.  Our first summer here Ben and Audrey, then 8 and 10 respectively, liked to swim in the pond, mud or no.  (Neither Ken nor I have; too muddy, thank you, but I will happily swim in clear water.)  But now we do know for sure:  a substantial snapping turtle with maybe a 14-inch-long shell, wet and covered with mud, was discovered crawling across the driveway recently just above the pond.  It was most likely on its way to lay its eggs.


AND FIREFLY TIME!

Everyone loves fireflies.  They are actually a kind of beetle, of the family Lampyridae, although as beetles go, they are kind of cute.  There are 19 species of fireflies in Vermont.  (Who knew!)  And how lovely for us humans that they use bioluminescence to attract sexual partners, males signalling to females who wait in the grass and may answer with a blink or two.  The higher the temperature, the faster they blink.

And this, from a 2002 story on Vermont Public Radio, the voice of University of Florida entomologist Jim Lloyd:  “There are subtle differences in the color of the light emitted by different varieties of lightning bugs: from a waxy yellow or lime green to a coppery glow. The males of each species have their own unique semaphore: a Morse code of dots and dashes. Most fireflies look pretty much the same, so identifying these patterns is the surest way to pinpoint a particular species. But it's not easy. It takes a keen eye, a stopwatch to time the intervals between flashes, and a thermometer. A firefly in Vermont might flash a little differently from one of the same species in Massachusetts. …these kinds of regional firefly dialects have developed because populations of fireflies are often isolated by mountains and forests. Fireflies may seem defenseless, but some are poisonous, especially for small reptiles or amphibians looking for a meal.”

Ah, June.

*Information thanks to Joe Klopfenstein, DVM, Column, Addison Independent, June 20, 2013

**Information from “The Place You Call Home,” a Northern Woodlands Publication, Center for Northern Woodlands Education, 2008.