So far this summer has been dry as a bone (“near- drought conditions,” the weather service calls it) followed by stream-filling thundery deluges (“rain, heavy at times”).

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When people aren’t complaining about drought, conversations turn to dog ticks. How many did you pick off your dog or yourself today?
Hummingbirds can distinguish many more colors than humans. Not just ultraviolet, but ultraviolet+green, ultraviolet+red, and ultraviolet+yellow. Researchers spent three summers deploying sugar of various hues to discover this. We are “color-blind compared to birds” according to one of the scientists. And, according to me, it’s good to clean out the hummingbird feeder before it gets moldy.
Bears have been digging up jack-in-the-pulpits throughout the hardwood parts of our land. They make neat, clean little cone-shaped holes and only eat the big plants. The small jacks that so often surround the parent plants remain – until next year.
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.
Some like it cold, including winter crane flies. Well, not too cold, but if it’s above freezing male winter crane flies form loose, bouncy swarms. Females fly up from the ground to choose a mate and then they lay eggs on the forest floor. Craneflies are easy to see against the surface of the snow or when they perch on windowpanes.
When woodpeckers feed their fledglings there’s a big racket, including relentless shrieking.
The temperature was -12.8 here last night, the coldest night of the winter thus far.
Proving once again that a hard rain is the best way to get rid of snow. Our 8 inches or so of snow was reduced to zero to 2 inches overnight. Creeks are rising.