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June 14, 2010
The phoebes have been raising their family inside the old red canoe in the garage rafters again this year. I get scolded if I go too close to the nest. The babies look so cute peeking out over the edge. They will be on their way soon, I am sure.
I had a surprise this morning while I was weeding the flower bed by the garage. I heard a sort of sklithering sound behind me and looked up just in time to watch a small bat slide down the metal roof of the shed and land with a plop on the beam that supports the door. I walked over and looked up at him. He was trembling all over but appeared to be unhurt. I went in the house to get my camera, but by the time I got back he had recovered enough to fly away when I approached him again.
I have no idea what he was doing that sent him on that precipitous slalom down the roof. I know that we have bats around, but we seldom see them in the daytime. One year we found one slumbering in the woodpile in the lean-to. This one was apparently tucked away under the ridgepole cap of the shed and lost his grip or something. I am always glad to see a bat. They eat the bugs that pester me, which makes me look on them with affection.
We are into full summer here now, with strawberries and blueberries growing and blackberry brambles in bloom. The early summer flowers are almost finished and the June beauties arriving. We have hawkweed and buttercups and daylilies now, irises and columbine in the flower beds and jack-in-the-pulpit in the woods. The clintonia is finished blooming for the year, and so is the Canada mayflower. I know now why Canada mayflower is also called wild lily of the valley. We had so many of them blooming this spring that I could smell their sweet fragrance when I walked under the spruce trees in the windbreak.
One thing that puzzles me is that we seem to have no thrushes this year. We usually have a hermit thrush singing from across the road, and veeries in the woods behind the house. But I have not heard them, and I miss their ethereal voices in the evening.
