The sweetest time of year

Yellow Warbler female, Charles River Peninsula, Needham, MA

June is the sweetest month at the CRP, when it's not pouring rain. The (invasive) multiflora rose is blooming and chicks of all sorts are cheeping and fledging. The mother yellow warbler above was hanging out in the relative open waiting for food deliveries from her partner while keeping an eye on the nest. At times she would even sit.

The tree swallows are fledging fiercely, testing the wind under their wings and invading the nest boxes of their cousins.

Meanwhile, some chicks are exhausting their parents, as in the fat cowbird below, gratefully taking what its gaunt song sparrow foster parent could offer.

And for me a special delight--a new patch bird: pileated woodpecker, crying loudly from the upper branches of a riverside dead tree.