The Melodious Woodlands

A Rose-breasted Grosbeak has been serenading the woods just outside our home, flitting from one tree branch to another, climbing higher in the canopy each time. Our trees are tall and straight with few branches down low. The fellow from the cooperative extension said this is the result of having many trees together...they lose their lower branches. The effect is almost rainforest-like.
Before I looked up the bird in the our field guide, I knew from the beak it was some sort of Grosbeak. The voice reminded me of a Robin's, which the book remarked, too. Melodic-like Mozart.
The red around its throat looks a bit like a scarf or bib. Its wings are mostly black with patches of white. At first I thought it was a Mocking bird, imitating a Robin because I saw the flash of black and white only which reminded me of a Mocking bird's tail.
After a long week commuting back and forth from the "big city," Concord...it is nice to hear the voices of the forest and to try to track down the origin of the songs.

Living in the Green

I never really noticed the white birch at the end of the field behind our home till now. At just before 6 a.m. the light illuminates the top of the long spindly tree and sets it apart from the predominantly greens ones. If I were a painter that's how I would paint the scene...that would be my line of sight. To the right of the tree is an old logging road, now a rough trail through the tall ferns. From my view the trail looks like a fathomless hole.
The whole woods is thick with green, lush like a rain forest after so many recent storms. In the field before the forest, rye grass we planted last year as a natural fertilizer, also stands tall and strong, its color somewhere between green and gray.

Just Outside Our Door

Just outside our door there are always amazing things to discover. Some weeding dislodges an ants’ home, as they scramble to move dozens of eggs that now lay exposed because of my interference.
On the foundation outside the front door two long green moths are spread out, slick against the cement like tattered leaves with eyes. I tried to entice one on my hand so my husband could take a better photo. It seemed like it was shaking, but it was only the breeze rustling its wings. It vibrated for a few seconds, like a helicopter building up speed and then flew off awkwardly. It seemed the size of a small bird.
The other – a cousin perhaps? Is still glued to the cement. It’s been there for hours. It let me measure it…3 inches long, 4 inches wide.

Later my spiritual director told me it was most likely a lunar month...common in the Eastern U.S., but a rare find, particularly during the day as they are nocturnal. The adults only live one week after emerging from their cocoons and only to mate, the females to lay eggs after mating. They have no mouths for during that time they do not eat. How sad, I said to my husband, to know this moth that spent hours by the foundation outside our home will only live a few days longer. Don't be sad he said...it does not know.

On the internet I read there are over 125,000 identified species of moths, and about 12,000 species of butterflies.

Moths Are Beatiful, too

My husband bought a bug zapper to cull the mosquito population – it says “environmentally friendly.” I am still uncertain about that.

The light in the device attracts moth, too, and their bodies are piling up.
Some moths cling close by to the siding of our house or on the wooden railing on the front steps. Moths can be beautiful, too, though with thicker legs and heavier bodies than butterflies.

Little swamp sparrows have been making regular visits to eat the resting moths. We haven’t seen the male cardinal in a few days.
Today a series of thunderstorm blew in, thumping the earth with heavy rain.