The berries of red baneberry are ripe, shiny, and bright. But they are named baneberry for a reason.

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It seems impolite to mention it, but it’s not inexpensive to keep our fleet of little birdfeeder birds fed.
The year of the toad? They seem to be everywhere, all sizes, and now trilling from ponds.
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.
Yesterday’s thunderstorm brought an inch of rain to the village about 2 miles from here and just a fleeting dampness here. An unwelcome but not unfamiliar occurrence.
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.
In winter black locust trees are stark – black, with sharply twisted branches, almost creepy. When flowering, as they are now, they are completely covered with gently drooping, beautiful flowers that almost cover a background of delicate leaves.
Hummingbirds have been reported in the past few days not far from where I live. They typically arrive here around May 15th. It’s been a bit colder than normal here in the past month, making a person wonder what’s up.
Brooks that often dry up in late summer around here have dried up. It is getting closer to late summer than I like to acknowledge,and it has been abnormally droughty.