Dave Mance III, Author at Vermont Almanac

Our dog flushed a grouse off a nest containing just three eggs this morning. Grouse normally incubate 9 to 14 eggs but when, after shooing off the dog, I reached into the brush pile to straighten out the situation, the eggs were warm, suggesting that this female was calling it quits at three.

May 30, 2020 in Ginny's Calendar, May /by Dave Mance III

The leaves of sugar maple seedlings don’t look at all like maple leaves. They have no lobes or very small lobes at best. You can see the seed leaves, the cotyledons, below. Last year’s seedlings are very small but they have maple shaped leaves – and no cotyledons. Plenty of both this year.

May 29, 2020 in Ginny's Calendar, May /by Dave Mance III

Showy orchis is flowering.

May 28, 2020 in Ginny's Calendar, May, Uncategorized /by Dave Mance III

Record high temperatures for May were recorded in Burlington (95°) and Saint Johnsbury (92°). On the top of Mount Mansfield it hit 85°. That’s the warmest temperature ever recorded there, on any month, according to a National Weather Service tweet. Fact-check pending.

May 27, 2020 in Ginny's Calendar, May /by Dave Mance III

Back to the Earth

May 26, 2020 in Dave Mance III, Dispatches, Gardening, May /by Dave Mance III

“We’re out of strawberry plants. And seed potatoes. And onion starts. We have a few asparagus left – that’s it. We’ve never sold out of everything this early in the 40 years I’ve been here.” – elderly woman behind the counter of a feedstore in a small town Reports from all over the region hold […]

Nice warm weather has gotten carpenter ant queens up and about. Lots of winged females looking to start a new colony in any rotting wood that’s lying around.

May 25, 2020 in Ginny's Calendar, May /by Dave Mance III

Toads in the garden and in the lawn. It’s time to do some mowing, but toads come first.

May 24, 2020 in Ginny's Calendar, May /by Dave Mance III

A Good Year For Pear Thrips

May 23, 2020 in Dispatches, May, Uncategorized /by Dave Mance III

This has been one of those years that really brings the timing of spring into focus. We had a pretty warm March, followed by a pretty cold April. (April averaged out at 3.2 degrees below the long-term normal in Saint Johnsbury.) This cold continued into May, a month that featured several unprecedented cold-weather events, including […]

Some of us need to relearn the thrush songs anew every year: the sort of ee-o-lay of the wood thrush, followed by a buzz; the longish first note of the hermit thrush followed by a jumble; the downward slide (think V) of the veery.

May 22, 2020 in Ginny's Calendar, May /by Dave Mance III

Daily check of the broad-winged hawk nest near our house, high in a maple tree, sometimes reveals a head on the nest and sometimes a tail; the incubating female taking in the view from both directions, as she sits there for 28 to 31 days, giving new perspective to our present stay-at-home situation.

May 21, 2020 in Ginny's Calendar, May /by Dave Mance III

About Dave Mance III

Entries by Dave Mance III