Heat Wave.

6-28-21 VERMONT: Ninety plus yesterday on the thermometer and the same coming for the next several days. Fortunately, the evenings are in the low seventies and the window fans cool off the house at night. Outside activity slows to a minimum, especially in the afternoon. It’s almost too hot to type. The dogs are not happy.

I have lots of bird news and sightings. An immature red-tailed hawk picked the top of a hemlock for a perch, but too close to the barn, where barn swallow have a nest and are busy feeding chicks. The parents drove the hawk away by repeated diving at him[her]. I posted the video yesterday.

I sat outside in the shade on the hot afternoon with the cam and caught a kingbird, least fly catcher, chipping sparrow, purple finch, goldfinch, mourning doves, all of which I have seen here before, but the exciting news was the brief visit from a scarlet tanager. He left before I could get the camera turned on. 

There’s been a bird house on the south side of the little barn for years, but this year I saw activity there—house wrens are raising a family. 

The trails in the pasture are mowed. Without Brady the horse grazing there, the grass is shoulder high in some spots. I like the look of the tall grass, but not trying to walk through it. 

Judy and I were exploring the mowed trails when we rousted a momma bird from a nest in the pasture. She flew away and the chicks scrambled in all directions when Maizie went to inspect. Judy took the dogs away while I waited behind a tree to see if everybody re-assembled. After a short time she, a turkey, was back and calling for the chicks and, presumably, found a new nest site. 

New blooms: catalpa tree, delphinium, milkweed, meadow sage, hairy beard tongue, daylily. 

Roses and the little barn with some of the grass mowed in front.

A brief look at a house wren carrying dinner.

The red-tailed hawk ane the swallows.

The baby swallows in the nest under the barn shelter.

A kingbird at the top of a dead pine. They are fly catchers. Most of the flycatchers are smaller birds.

The least fly catcher, that's it's name, is half the size of the kingbird, but they share the same job.

Looking back from the end of the pasture toward the house. This is where we desturbed the Momma turkey.

Mrs. Turkey back to round up the brood.