The Wonderful Month of June

A favorite freestone stream in the mountains, alive with aquatic insects and foraging trout

A massive White Pine with centuries of stories locked within

Tiger Swallowtails “mud-puddling” to ingest nutrients and improve reproductive success

A chatty House Wren, rewarding me for the nest box I hung on a garden post

Taking a grooming timeout while guarding the nearby nest and solitary eaglet.

Ruby-throated Hummingbird incubating 1-3 eggs; they’ll hatch in about 2 weeks

An egg-laying Snapper; she dug her nest in roadside gravel near her swampy habitat 

A month-old whitetail fawn learning about mobility

Wild mustard colonizing a fallow field on a dairy farm

Photos by NB Hunter (June, 2018). © All rights reserved.

Summer’s End

Some memories of late summer, fresh and vivid as ever; memories of fields, forests, streams … and precious friends along the way.

An Anglewing butterfly, Eastern Comma, on Panicled Aster

Eastern Chipmunk perched high up in a wild apple tree

Wild apples; a bumper crop with limbs bending, and sometimes breaking, under the load

Perching dragonfly (Meadowhawk), highlighted by a background of New England Aster blossoms

Thistle in a slight breeze

Monarch butterfly visiting New England Aster

A mountain stream, dead for decades from coal mine acid pollution, now with a heart beat due to massive, long-term clean-up efforts.

Cow elk, part of a family group of 4 (excluding the rutting, 7 x 7 heard bull that is keeping an eye on them); Pennsylvania’s wild elk herd.

“Rather than a problem to be solved, the world is a joyful mystery to be contemplated with gladness and praise.”   – Pope Francis

“Pennsylvania Wilds”

Ralph Harrison 1928-2015: forester, conservationist, forest historian; the father of the Pennsylvania elk herd; a friend and mentor for 43 years. ……………..   In loving memory.

Photos by NB Hunter. © All Rights Reserved.