Posted on 06/15/2024 6:14:29 PM PDT by rlmorel
Just finished grilling some ribs, sun went down behind the trees, and I am sitting in my backyard hammock looking across my yard up here in New England.
Got my pipe, having a smoke...just perfect.
The birds are having a ball!
There are a lot of adolescent fledges, I count four downy woodpeckers, one who has the beginnings of little strings of red, but they stick out in amusing way, giving it the appearance of a kid with a bad haircut whose cowlick protrudes off the back of his head.
Anyone see anything interesting in your neck of the woods?
Look for a used one. There are other brands, too.
Thanks
You’re lucky! Looks like a good privacy yard, too. That’s why I’m blessed to be in the mountains. The only intruders we have are bears and deer... and turkies!
Nice! We are currently in northwestern Connecticut, near the Farmington River and Barkhamsted Reservoir. I am thrilled to see the annual return of fireflies! They are so beautiful and magical, darting all over the woods at night. Wish they were around all summer, not just a few weeks. Are they out early this year in New England?
Re: 75 - We also had a milder winter in 23/24. Lots of ticks - and House Sparrows.
Over the years, I have not seen enough of them to figure out when they first show up...only that they haven’t been showing up much, if at all.
I went up to Maine some years ago (back in the early Nineties) to a rural town named Sedgewick on the peninsula between the Belfast and Bar Harbor peninsula, and my friend’s grandmother had an old farmhouse, still had the wood burning stove at that time, and she was on a road with a huge meadow about a quarter mile across.
One night, as I looked out over that huge meadow, the entire thing was alight with fireflies. It was magical. It is one of my most treasured memories. All those fireflies!
Wow… wish I could have seen that! I love the Maine coast and I love fireflies. Fireflies are indeed magical… 🙂
Aren’t they though? I remember being a little kid, probably maybe six or seven years old closer to six I think. I live down in Virginia, in northern Virginia. It sure was different back then than it is now.
I lived in Fairfax, Probably less than a quarter mile from George Mason University. Back then, up Beaumont Hill They were building the university while I live there.
I went to Green Acres Elementary school, only a few yards from where I lived. Those Northern Virginia summer nights were warm and gentle. to a six-year-old kid.
I remember being outside, sun had already gone down, and the bushes near my house were alive with fireflies. On the other side of that fence was an enormous pasture owned by a farmer. There was one gigantically tall for tree in the middle Of that pasture.
I vividly remember walking slowly around a firefly trying to capture it. And then, when I captured it, I remembered that instant before you open your hands. You have them cupped together and there’s something fluttering about inside.
In the darkening air, I slightly uncupped my hands, And there was a small glowing firefly. I vividly remember. Seeing the skin of my hands illuminated in a small area around that tiny insect. I could see the fingerprints and the creases .
Yes.
Fireflies are definitely magical for me.
Then, I would hear my mother banging on the big triangle that was attached to the outside of our house in the backyard. It seems so ridiculous now. Who would do it now, right? They’d probably call them on their cell phone.
But I could hear her furiously banging away at that big triangle, the metal must’ve been at least an inch and diameter. She had a big metal rod that she would use on it.
It really carried. You could hear that along way off. There are parts about my childhood that I do really like.
We have mostly sparrows here across the street from Riverside Park, but every so often other birds and bird songs. I wish I knew the bird songs so I would know who was there.
Saw two robins in the early spring. For a while there was an owl in the park. Sometimes a seagull gets lost, takes a wrong turn at Staten Island or something, and complains like hell about it.
The sparrows walk around my feet when I walk to the subway in the morning. I guess they know me by now and know I won’t chase them like some baddy kids do.
I saw a roadrunner trying (unsuccessfully) to catch a grasshopper in an office parking lot. :)
Forgot the pigeons, but they are mostly on Broadway where they can find stuff to eat.
Hah, at first I thought your post said Trumpster Swan.
I have a cool application for my phone...called “Song Sleuth” that can identify birds.
If you hear a bird song, you can pull out your phone, launch the app, begin recording, and if you can get a second of two of the song, you can hit an “Identify” button.
Often, there is more than one choice, ranked by likelihood. It works really well, but the problem is, sometimes you just cannot get the phone out and recording before the bird flies away or stops singing. Ya gotta be quick!
When I first moved to this block, there were no trees, but shortly afterward the block association planted them. Now they are up to the third story of some buildings.
One street north of me the trees are over the rooftop height of the five-story brownstone houses. Beautiful street that kept the old-fashioned front staircases on three brownstone buildings. That part of the street is not next to the park, though, so they don’t get the birds like we do.
Nice!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.