Ditch lily, ditch lily, give me your hand

Naturally
June brought greening and growing. As sung in “Carousel,” “June is busting out all over.”
Bird is the word
I watched a kestrel take a house sparrow from a roadside. Young starlings have a grey-brown plumage. Cuckoos called. These rain crows feed on tent caterpillars.
There are over 800 whooping cranes in the world. I’ve been fortunate enough to have seen them in four local counties as they moved through.
I’ve rescued loon, eagles, hawks, pelicans, herons, owls, ducks, vultures, geese, kestrels, a bittern, a swan and more. They weren’t appreciative as I haven’t received a single thank you note from any of them.
Ditch lily
Baneberry, blue-eyed grass and birdsfoot trefoil bloomed as do the clovers—white or Dutch, red, and yellow hop or golden.
Thick shoots called candles appeared at the terminal ends of pine branches.
The ditch lily, sometimes called an outhouse lily, is a vigorous orange-flowered daylily that finds home in our road ditches. When I spot them, I sing a corrupted Beach Boys song, “Ditch lily, ditch lily, give me your hand. Give me something that I can remember.”
Crepuscular critters
I was late getting home and didn’t take in the hummingbird feeder before a raccoon had taken it down for me. The raccoon removed all six of the tiny, plastic, yellow flowers from their cavities and slurped down the sweet water. A deer towered over the corn rows. Deer are crepuscular, active in the twilight of dawn and dusk.
Spittlebugs
If you want to see an insect, look at a flower. Butterflies included: monarchs, tiger swallowtails, blues, sulphurs, skippers, black swallowtails, fritillaries, cabbage whites and crescents. The swallowtails are our largest butterflies here, but the largest, the giant swallowtail, is uncommon. June is the time for the big moths. The spotted, light brown Polyphemus is named after Polyphemus, the giant cyclops from Greek mythology who had a single large, round eye in the middle of his forehead because of the large eyespots in the middle of the moth’s hind wings. It has a 4-5 inch wingspan. Cecropia has a 5-6 inch wingspan and is reddish-brown. And the luna moth is green with a 3-5 inch wingspan.
Spittlebugs have a protective covering resembling soap suds or spit on a plant. It looks as if a baseball team had been there.
Hot, dry summers make for large populations of boxelder bugs in the fall. Those insects are most abundant in years when May is warm and July is dry. Dawn liquid soap in water is an effective spray to use on the harmless bugs if you find them annoying.
The mosquitoes bothered me as I gathered raspberries. My memory told me I notice the first big batch of mosquitoes around Memorial Day each year.
Ebony jewelwings are beautiful damselflies. In good light they appear a bright metallic green or teal blue depending on the angle of light. They appear black in shade.
Bald-faced hornets build the iconic gray, football-shaped nests in trees. A neighbor called them bull wasps and they’re prolific eaters of deer flies and horseflies.
Those rascally rabbits
A farmer’s market vendor told me apple cider vinegar discourages rabbits. Soak items (corncobs or rags work well) in vinegar for a few minutes and place them around the garden. Resoak every week. Or fill a spray bottle with half water and half vinegar. Apple cider vinegar is also effective at repelling ants.
Q&A
“Why do birds roll around in the dirt?” Birds take dirt baths because the abrasive particles in the dust clean feathers and remove lice and parasites. Birds roll about loose sand or dust and shake vigorously. The sand and dust absorb excess preen oil and remove dry skin. Dust bathing leaves bowl-shaped hollows on the ground. It’s soap and water without the soap and water.
Tom Belshan of Glenville asked about cormorants. John Milton, in “Paradise Lost,” described Satan as having “sat like a cormorant” on the Tree of Life, plotting the downfall of Adam and Eve. Despite the bad press, cormorants have benefited from the banning of DDT. Studies found 90% of the fish they consume are 5.3 inches or less in length and weigh an average of 4.2 ounces. They dive 5-25 feet for 30-70 seconds and could be a problem in baitfish ponds. They prefer an adequate food supply within a mile, but will fly a dozen miles for food.
Moron nature
To get more on nature from a nature moron, go to my blog at https://www.albatt.com/blogs/ Or listen in every Tuesday to KMSU (89.7 FM) or KTOE (1420 AM) aired on various dates. All radio shows are online.
Thanks for stopping by
“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”—Winston Churchill
“The Panama Canal was dug with a microscope.”—Ronald Ross (alluding to mosquito research)
Do good.

©Al Batt 2021

The baby robins came out of the blue—blue eggs, that is. Photo by Al Batt