Evening with a view

Looking to the north from Roundtop

 Yesterday evening was clear and not too hot, so I took advantage of that to walk up one of the smaller ski slopes to take in the view. Today is hazy and much hotter, not the kind of weather for that kind of walking! I’ll wait until the weather is cooler and the hawks are flying before I hike up any of the bigger slopes.

While I was up there, the local band of Canada geese performed their evening flyby. This year’s young are now airborne but still gaining strength. Flybys are usually limited to dawn and just before sunset. The young birds are now strong enough to make a full, wide circle around the entire mountain before settling onto one of the ponds. Just a week or so ago, the extent of their flight was a beeline line between the ponds.

 

The current flock is 26 strong, 6 parent birds and a total of 20 young ones, pretty much evenly split among the three couples. I would not be surprised to learn that the couples were raised here too. The three groups are always together and seem to get along without friction.

I was also treated to a round robin of dueling eastern pewees. At least three of them were calling, one right after the other. Two were very close, the third not much further away. It won’t be much longer, no more than another month, before their haunting call will disappear from the woods for another year. They are the last summer bird to arrive in the spring and pretty much the first to leave, though the barn swallows leave at much the same time.

For the moment, summer has a hard grip on the mountain I can already see towards the end of it for another year.