In midsummer, many bird species no longer sing as singing is a part of the breeding season and most chicks are now out of the nest.

An exception is the Song Sparrow and we heard and saw many today on this lovely, 21 degree and sunny morning.

Another highlight was juvenile robins bathing in a little mud puddle.

We had several Great Blue Herons close to each other.

Species list: double-crested cormorant, red-necked grebe, great blue heron, mute swan, mallard, spotted sandpiper, ring-billed gull, Caspian tern, common tern, mourning dove, belted kingfisher, eastern kingbird, tree swallow, rough-winged swallow, barn swallow, gray catbird, American robin, cedar waxwing, European starling, warbling vireo, yellow warbler,  house sparrow, red-winged blackbird, brown-headed cowbird, common grackle, northern cardinal, American goldfinch, song sparrow.  (28 species)

Other nature:

Botany:

Park scenes:

This morning’s group:

NATURE POETRY

For once, then, something

Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths—and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something. – Robert Frost

Miles Hearn