sprouts

 The seeds of spring have sprouted and are growing fast in the long days of summer.

Some sprouts take longer than others. But they are the most fun to watch as they ripen.

firewood

People living in the west are baking in triple digit figures. The temperature this afternoon is 72 degrees, a little cool for this time of year. A nature walk while mowing the grass, saw two snakes slither away from the mower. Saw the fawn frolicking in the back field, didn't see mom. The fawn is much bigger than the last time I saw it, but still full of vim and vinegar. 

It's the middle of summer, but I saw a fresh load of firewood in the neighbor's driveway.

 Winter is never far away when you live in the north country. Going to be away for a few days visiting with family and friends. We're going to enjoy it while we can.

bluebirds and house wrens

 We have had bluebirds in the back for probably 15 years. 

They are beautiful and I have become very attached to them. I feel their welfare in the birdhouse I have provided is partially my responsibility. For most of those 15 years, the bluebirds have nested successfully, having a couple of broods every summer. There have been some years when they have not been successful, and that has almost always been due to competition from other species, mostly sparrows and sometimes house wrens. I have come to hate those birds, everything about them.

This year has been one of those years when we have not had any baby bluebirds in the birdhouse. They started a nest, but were driven away by sparrows and ultimately the nest was taken over by house wrens. I started to empty the birdhouse of the nesting material brought there by the wrens. I didn't want them nesting there, but they are very persistent. I would empty it out and they would try to fill it back up. I even thought about taking the birdhouse down altogether. That would really show them.

But something happened. I won't bore you with the details, but I realized that the problem was really with the sparrows and not with the wrens. I think I can minimize sparrow activity in our back yard which should facilitate nesting for the bluebirds nest year. The bluebirds are the earliest arrivals in the spring and they should be all right moving forward. As far as the house wrens are concerned, their nesting this year shouldn't impact the bluebird's chances next year. I decided to stop emptying out the birdhouse every day. Live and let live seemed to be the proper course of action.

As I said earlier, I've always hated everything about sparrows and house wrens. The call of the house wren has always been especially aggravating to me. It seemed so shrill and jarring. It actually affected my ability to fully enjoy these precious days of summer. I noticed that when I stopped fighting with the house wrens, however, my hostile reaction to their calls went away. Instead of a hostile intrusion into my consciousness, it was just the call of a wild bird. The animus I had been experiencing had gone away.

This experience was a powerful lesson. I had always known that my "picking and choosing" of birds in the natural world was arbitrary and gratuitous, but I had always thought that it was basically harmless, like my animosity towards the Los Angeles Dodgers. But I was wrong. Indulging in anger has a negative impact first and foremost on he who is doing the indulging.

The Buddha said, "We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world." My life with bluebirds and house wrens has given me a deeper insight into the wisdom of these words.

  

kayaking

 Summer weather returned on Monday. We took our new kayaks out to Glen Lake for a paddle. 

Monday was a holiday and the lakes in the area were packed. But when we pulled out of the boat launch area, the lake didn't seem busy at all. Having the truck makes these events easy. We're able to just throw the kayaks in the back and secure them with bungee cords. We got ice cream cones for the drive home. It was a lot of fun.

strange

 It was a very strange Fourth this year, cool with light rain. Temperatures never got above the mid-sixties yesterday. I made soup for dinner. It was 48 degrees here this morning. The furnace went on and woke Allyn up.

Leaves on the maple trees changing from the light green of spring to the darker shade of summer. St. John's Wort appearing.

anomalies

 I think Clarkie was the first to see her, a single doe feeding in the back pasture. 

She appeared now and then over the course of a couple of weeks. It seemed a little bit unusual to see a solitary deer. Usually they appear in herds of a half dozen or so. Given the time of the year, I wondered whether she was prepping for a birth or whether one had already occurred. Sure enough, the other day we saw her with a fawn. The fawn couldn't have been much more than a day or two old. You could barely make her out as they walked through the tall grass. The fawn would mostly follow mom, but every once in awhile, it would start running around; for no apparent reason and in no particular direction. It was running just for the fun of it; just happy to be alive in June in Vermont. Sometimes the mom would join in the fun. It was wonderful to see.

The other day I was out on the usual morning walk and heard the sound of a crow screeching over the hill in the back. It went on for hours and I heard the same sound coming from a different crow up the road a piece. I wondered if there was some parenting going on; if they were directing/training some offspring who had recently fledged. On the same day, I heard the sound of a fox barking from deep in the woods, and wondered again if it was literally "barking" out directions to her new pups. It certainly seemed like the right time of year for that.

Part of the enjoyment of observing behaviors in the natural world is when anomalous behaviors occur; trying to figure out what's going on. I've been doing this blog for many years and this is one of the first times I've considered some of these anomalies as signs of parenting behavior. In hindsight, it seems like I've probably been missing these parenting clues for many years.