Summer days aren't always like this on the lake, but something to be savored when they are. This was taken on July 12, not from my kayak, but from my bike, on the Colchester Causeway. It's been one of my favorite places to ride, or walk, for as long as I can remember, and worthy of a Carver's Daughter article soon, I think. I always feel rejuvenated, and tired, when I return to land from a biking voyage across the lake.
The birding has been lovely this summer. Another bird for my life list--a Dickcissel, in Hinesburg. He has apparently found a mate after several weeks of singing alone, and is nesting here, which I believe is a record for Vermont. Usually they are found farther west and south. This is my sixth new bird for this year, bringing my total to 308. I'm gaining on my goal of 314, which probably looks rather arbitrary, but it's not. This is the number of birds my father had on his life list when I started mine. At the time, it seemed unreachable, and it's exciting to be getting close. (His total grew quickly beyond 314 once he began travelling to the tropics.)
All the regulars have been hanging out at camp with us this summer, especially a plethora of cardinals whose song is so evocative of their brilliant beauty. The peregrines decided for some reason only known to peregrines not to grace us with their presence on their nesting cliffs this year. But they are still very much in the area, diving past the windows and scoring the air with their harsh calls. I love their fierceness. (Dennis loves them a little bit less, especially their habit of hunting at dawn. Loudly.) A female common merganser swims by with the family in a line behind her, the phoebes under the camp are on their second brood, and the hummingbirds are emptying the feeder daily. On the mammal front--a doe has claimed the meager grazing around our camp as her favorite spot, and three minks gambol along their path to and from the water every day. An occasional skunk comes by at night, judging from the smell that comes and thankfully goes with it, and once in a while, a fox appears in our headlights and then vanishes.
A lot of wind (and more recently a leg injury which is now on the mend) have prevented me from doing as much kayaking as I'd like to. And we haven't been spending quite as much time here during the day as we have other years. Dennis and I added a motorhome (a thirty-two foot Jayco Greyhawk Prestige) to the family in June, and we've been having fun getting it ready to roll. Lots of outfitting and decorating, practice drives, pairing it to the Jeep (now called our "toad") and figuring out stuff like what an inverter is and exactly what do the solar panels do up there? Oh, and we had to have our driveway regravelled to make it level and prevent the new addition from sinking up to the solar panels next mud season. All good stuff, but time consuming. Hopefully we aren't driving our neighbors crazy going up and down our quiet dirt road with what one of them has dubbed "the sexy rumble." (Someone else calls it "the Bantha"--think huge, hairy, lumbering Star Wars creature that carries folks around. And it has also been referred to as "that Thing." Sometime, it will have an official name. We have also observed that it is a reverse Tardis--bigger on the outside than on the inside.)
I expect that my life list will grow a lot more this fall and winter when we go rumbling off to warmer climes in the Sexy Bantha Reverse Tardis Thing. But for now, I'm enjoying the sun and the wind and rain here, listening to the cardinals sing.
I hope everyone is having an lovely summer, too.
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