Midsummer News

I'll just be reading you the headlines of the midsummer news. The details would take us into microbiology and particle physics, and I can't do that. The deer are very busy, as you can see above. The photo of the fawn nursing was made on July 7, and only three weeks later the bucks' antlers are growing and they begin to sniff for estrogen in the air. There's just no rest for the does. But we have enjoyed our twins. Twin white-tail deer are quite common, but these we've been able to observe regularly near the house and so have taken a personal stake in their welfare. By the way, the buck photographed on August 2, the second photo above, seems to be the same one photographed on August 12, so you can see how much his rack has grown in ten days.

We've enjoyed several coyote choruses in recent weeks. I slept through one Alison heard one night about 3 a.m. right in our front yard. She said it was full of young ones still learning and going free-form on the expert parents.

If you can identify the mystery tail in the third photo from the bottom, you will win a prize, I'm sure. It looks familiar, but it's not the dog, and it's also not anything else I can think of. Please help.

I look at the doe scratching her head as on an all-too-brief break between nursing and breeding, allowed only enough time to wish that she doesn't have to have twins again. But maybe she likes the whole experience of living here just as we do.

Otherwise, the marsh must surely be at its climax; clearly, there's no more room for new plants. Between the Joe-Pye weeds and the green-headed cone flowers and cattails above and the Cleavers below, we've got the "places where a rabbit couldn't go." So far this year, I've identified 95 different flowering plants and still more are coming. Among the birds, we're into the second and third clutches of wrens, grosbeaks, finches, robins, and who knows who else.

It has been an enjoyably cool summer, but the heat is rising, the book is approved at Nebraska, classes begin a week from Monday, and -- whew-- the summer's gone.