No.10–Summer Snapshots
A dispatch from a summer both enjoyed and lost.
I found a yellow wooly bear caterpillar on the road yesterday. A clear sign summer is wrapping up.
As some of you may know, I was bedridden with a bacterial infection for 3 weeks and sick for an additional 3 more this summer.
When I saw the woolybear I instantly was excited because damn, they’re so cute. I love them. But then thrown into a bit of dismay; I had so many lovely summer naturalist posts planned for this space that I wasn’t able to post. My dear friend
suggested creating a “Summer Snapshots” post which includes all of them! And so here I am!May
Gentle Morning Birdsong - ft. Pacific-slope Flycatcher, Dark-eyed Junco, Violet-Green Swallow, Townsend’s Warbler
One of my favourite ways to spend a summer morning this year has been coffee outside on the deck with the Merlin app running in the background. I’m not very good at identifying bird calls but Merlin is amazingly accurate with live-analysis of the calls and an easy way to double check its suggestion.
These are the four birds it caught that morning on the recording. There are also some lovely robins and ravens that are frequent visitors.
The Junco and Swallows are frequently and friendly visitors around here. The Warbler and Flycatcher are more secretive.
I find Merlin invaludable and has really helped me come a long way with my birding and knowing what to look for when I hear a certain bird call.
June
Is it really summer if the cicadas aren't out yet? On the first week of June, they finally arrived. It’s been unseasonably hot this year and I’ve been eagerly anticipating the awakening of our only resident cicada species.
I love cicadas. It really doesn’t feel like summer without them. Perhaps that’s just an induced feeling from all the anime I watch where cicada calls are synonymous with summer, but hearing them brings joy every year.
This audio is credited to Songs of Insects and isn’t the exact same cicada as the ones on the Island but it sounds similar. Alas, I didn’t record my own audio of it this year.
On one of our daily walks, we were treated to this juvenile great blue heron sniping dragonflies and damselflies out of the air as a little snack. This little one either isn’t very good at catching fish yet, or has been bullied out of some of the better hunting grounds in the nature reserve by its elders. We’ve seen it catching and eating garter snakes on a rocky area of the park as well. Its diet is quite varied.
We were also treated to a lovely rainstorm in the middle of June (always welcome in Canadian summers).
Like many, I find the sound of gentle rain on the glass skylight calming. Summer rainstorms never bring the mild anxiety that a Fall storm does, as they’re both less intense and completely embraced during the dry season here.
July
There were really only a few days of July I got to enjoy before getting sick, but they were jampacked with lovely outdoor activities.
On the first, to avoid Canada Day celebrations, we (ft. Amy! and her husband who were visiting) went for a walk in the nearby wetlands.
Much of the wetlands had grown up significantly since I visited in early spring. There were thistles as tall as my chest, and these extrordinary Wild Teasels that towered 6’ in height. I’d never seen them before and while it’s an introduced species I was captivated by their unique shapes. The middle portion was in the process of turning a lovely purple shade, similar to the nearby thistles.
According to Wikipedia, the teasel was frequently used as a comb to clean natural textiles such as wool before a metal tool replaced them.
One of my favourite moments from July came later when I was struggling on a walk while still sick. The thistles were in seed and producing so many seeds to float away. But because of the wind direction, they were catching in masses on the wild carrots and forming these large blankets over the foiliage like a whimsical coating of spiderweb.
I just love all of the textures in this photography I took from above.
I hope you enjoyed this little roundup of small moments of joy from the past few months. I have another post I’m working on for some of the ocean adventures that were had also in the first part of July before getting ill.
Thank you for reading and I’d love to know:
What have been your favourite moments this summer?
~googles "is a woolybear prickly?"
Bruh, I've been in towns where the cicadas are SOOOO loud, it's almost scary. I'm like, chill, I want you as BGM, not as the main character...
Also, the "gentle rain" playlists on the green dot are LIES. Some of them are torrential downpours and just, NOT soothing haha Oddly enough, I found some YT vids of people walking through cool cities at night while it rains and I liked it!
I love the photo you took of the white seed blankets.