A Look at the Season's Main Events
By Virginia Barlow
June
Common yellowthroats are good news for slow drivers: they sing loudly and seem to like roadsides / Sapsuckers are excavating new nest cavities. Aspen trees infected by the false tinder fungus are preferred. Look for hoof-shaped brackets, which are the fruiting bodies of this fungus / The brown thrasher loves to sing, and he has as many as 2000 songs in his repertoire / Honeybee lore: a swarm in June is worth a silver spoon / Beginning of firefly displays
Raven young have fledged. They will follow their parents for about a month / A female mosquito that lives to mosquito old age will lay 10 batches of eggs, with about 200 eggs in each / Tenerals, as newly emerged dragonflies are called, are vulnerable for several hours, until their soft wings harden. Look for them at the edges of ponds / June is when most brown-headed cowbirds lay their eggs. A female may deposit up to 24 eggs in the nests of other bird species
The larvae of Bruce spanworms are dropping to the soil to pupate. The adult “hunter moths” will emerge in October and November / Red efts have round tails and rough skin. When they return to water, the tail becomes keeled and the skin smooth / The turkey vultures that are now hatching will spend the next three months as nestlings / Cedar waxwings are nesting – later than most birds, perhaps because they depend on fruits and berries to feed their chicks
Earliest wood frog tadpoles transform into half-inch-long subadults and take to the woods. Some will go to different ponds to breed when they mature, ensuring genetic diversity / Old fields may now be bright yellow if they have been invaded by common buttercup, a plant that most domestic animals find to be unpalatable / Gray fox pups that were born in March or April are learning to hunt. They might be climbing trees to escape predators or to catch squirrels
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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.
