A Look at the Season's Main Events
By Virginia Barlow
August
Raspberry season coming to an end; blackberries will ripen soon / Turtlehead blooming / Earliest Jefferson salamander larvae lose their gills and leave their breeding ponds / Second batch of flying squirrels is born, often in cavities excavated and formerly occupied by sapsuckers / Larval eastern newts undergo metamorphosis at the end of their first summer, when most transform into the red eft phase, leaving ponds to live on dry land for two to seven years
August 12-13: peak of the Perseid meteor shower, which produces about 60 meteors per hour / Green frogs are being eaten by many birds: black ducks, mallards, herons, bitterns, crows, and northern harriers. Several reptiles and mammals also have green frog on their menus / Though wood turtles are most visible to humans in uplands, they spend a lot more time in thick vegetation near water / Male scarlet tanagers are looking strange as they molt from red to green
Bumblebees are executing courtship flights / Swallows have begun to migrate. Look for mixed flocks – tree, barn, cliff – feeding above rivers or perched on telephone lines / Redbacked salamanders eat a wide variety of food, mostly insects (especially ants) and many other arthropods, including generous helpings of mites / The nodding flowers of the ghostly Indian pipe have turned upwards and will persist through winter in a blackish, stiffened form
Goldfinches may still have young in the nest / Now is the time to dig up this year’s burdocks, before this biennial produces sticky burrs next year / A painted turtle’s diet is 50 percent vegetarian and 50 percent insects, snails, small fish, tadpoles, mussels, and dead animals / Clouds of pollen fill the air in cattail marshes / Juniper berries can be crushed to season veal or roast lamb / Nighthawks are migrating; look for these slender-winged birds at dusk
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These listing are from observations and reports in our home territory at about 1,000 feet in elevation in central Vermont and are approximate. Events may occur earlier or later, depending on you latitude, elevation - and the weather.
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© 2008 by the author; this article may not be copied or reproduced without the author's consent.
