A Look at the Season's Main Events
By Virginia Barlow
June
Gray tree frogs scatter in the woods to hide in knotholes and tree cavities the rest of the year, so now is the time to find them. Listen for a cross between a loud trill and an air-raid siren / Just before giving birth, pregnant moose drive away their offspring from the previous year / First batch of phoebes are leaving the nest. The female will start batch two while the male feeds the fledglings / Star-nosed moles are giving birth to three to seven young. These wetland creatures will soon be eating worms, insects, crustaceans, and mollusks
Vireos, warblers, and tanagers are likely to be using birch bark in their nests / It is said that an acre of black locust can produce 1600 pounds of honey – the most of any honey plants studied. Now is the time to look for busy bees / Chokecherries have finished blooming; black cherries are starting to bloom / Downy and hairy woodpecker chicks have fledged after spending three or four weeks in the nest. The parents will feed them for several more weeks
Black-eyed Susan is now beginning its long flowering period / Peak of breeding season for black bears. Cubs will be born next January or February / The sweet white clover now flowering along roadsides will be full of insects on a sunny day / Raven fledglings are making an awful whining-screeching noise. How do the parents stand it? / Big green darners are patrolling streams / Showy ladies’ slippers are blooming. They rely mostly on bees for pollination
Serviceberry provides summer fruits for woodpeckers, eastern kingbirds, thrushes, waxwings, orioles, grosbeaks, red-eyed vireos, and cardinals / Black winged damselflies are zipping around / Baby fishers are traveling with their mothers / Young ovenbirds are just out of the nest / Earliest wood frog tadpoles transform into 1/3-inch-long subadults and take to the woods. Some will go to different ponds to breed when they mature, ensuring genetic diversity
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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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© 2005 by the author; this article may not be copied or reproduced without the author's consent.
