Mashed up jewelweed plants applied to poison ivy and other rashes will relieve the inflammation and itching / Larvae of European skippers, introduced to Ontario in 1810, are feeding on timothy and other grasses / Groups of whirligig beetles often swim in circles. Each beetle has four eyes, two looking up and two below the water line / Live-bearing female garter snakes spend much of the day basking, incubating their developing young at between 29 and 32˚C

Goldenrod will be the most noticeable flower for the next month or so / Purple loosestrife is blooming. Introduced from Europe, it is aggressive, of little value to wildlife, and extremely beautiful / Large longhorned beetles can be seen at dusk following the smell of freshly cut wood / During the Dog Days, chipmunks stay below ground and live on stored nuts and seeds / The pink flat-topped flowers of Joe Pye weed appear in masses now, in wet or moist areas

Hummingbirds drop their temperature and metabolism at night to conserve energy. They enter a state of torpor, but since they weigh a mere tenth of an ounce, they can warm and revive themselves quickly / Baltimore orioles and spotted sandpipers are migrating / Many birds and mammals prey on red-backed salamanders, but snakes are their most fearsome predator, as they share the same habitat / Over 150 bird species and many mammals eat raspberries and blackberries

Look for puffballs, edible in the hard, white stage / Bald-faced hornets’ paper nests are now big and obvious. The queen began building from scratch in early spring and worked alone until her first eggs hatched and developed into adult workers / Goldfinches may still have young in the nest / Red-backed salamander eggs hatch. The female has guarded them for the past one to two months. The larval stage is completed within the egg, so there’s no tadpole stage