June is Babies!

June is the month of babies

June is babies. Baby birds, those first clutches of Robins emerging in the world. Or, birds setting up shop for their babies, like the Great Crested Flycatcher who returned to the nest box in my front yard. Baby deer also wandering through the woods out front. But June is also, for me, the month of human babies I love and celebrate—my sister, both of my parents, the daughters of two close friends, four friends I adore were all born this month. There is a lot to celebrate.

And yet June. June! So much rain. And so hot. I resist using air conditioning—it was not something I grew up with and really most of the world doesn’t have air conditioning so it feels a luxury. But every summer a few days in August usually get to me. This year, the a/c has been on many days, the combination of heat and humidity challenging.  I was lucky enough to spend a week at the end of June tucked in at Eighth Lake State Park in the Adirondacks and even there it was hot. But a lake meant that I could paddle and swim (with the loons!), taking the edge off of the heat. Still, much of the state sweltered with unusually high heat that combined with a roaring humidity—because there was also so much rain.

June is Bicknell’s Thrush month. Every year I hike to the summit of Slide Mountain—the highest peak in the Catskills at 4,190 feet—where these elusive birds nest. Like all birds that are fussy in their requirements to breed—in this case, above 3,500 feet and in habitat disturbed by wind and ice—they are rare, and in decline. Most often, I get to hear the song of the bird emerge from the dense spruce-fir forest and that’s it. But this year my friend Chip Blake and I loitered long enough on the summit that we not only heard but saw these large thrushes with speckled breasts. I made a second Bicknell’s excursion in June (I always vow to try and summit a few peaks to see who is where) to Black Dome with no luck in hearing the birds there.

June is also the month where I take to the water, regularly paddling the Tivoli Bays, and regularly visiting with my little friend, the Least Bittern. If a Least Bittern is your friend, you know that you are living a lucky life.

Robin Eggs

Great-crested Flycatcher setting up shop

Loon on a nest, Eighth Lake, Adirondacks