On July 6 the Sun will be 94.5 million miles from Earth, as far away as it will be at any other time in 2010 / One of the planet’s most successful creations, the mosquito, has been here for 50 million years. A female mosquito can suck up two and a half times her empty body weight in blood / Garter snakes are giving birth to live young. They are less common in coniferous forests because earthworms, their favorite prey, are scarce in these more acid soils

Deer mouse population is on the rise. It grows to a high of 15 mice per acre in autumn / Beginning of milkweed blooming; its nectar is very popular with bumblebees, honeybees, and many other insects / Bullfrog tadpoles are transforming into adults. They spend two years as mostly vegetarians; then, as adults, they eat any kind of animal they can catch / Canada geese adults are molting and their young cannot fly yet, so the families hunker down in seclusion

Spring salamanders transform into adults after spending about four years as tadpoles / Tall meadow rue is blooming, its feathery flower heads well above other roadside and marshy plants / Beginning of ripe raspberries / American kestrels subsist mainly on large insects and only occasionally feast on small birds or mammals. They tend to return to the same section of telephone wire day after day / Bank swallow migration is underway. It will peak in August

Yellow-bellied sapsuckers, unlike many other woodpeckers, don’t excavate insect larvae. Their major summer foods are fruit, ants, sap, and the inner bark of trees / Bitterns, herons, and shorebirds are moving south. The young will follow later, in September and October / If eastern chipmunks produce two litters, the second batch is usually born in late July / If it is hot and dry, toads spend the day beneath loose soil, emerging at night to search for food