Where Have All of the Squirrels Gone

It feels as if I didn't pay enough attention. I last saw a squirrel in my yard -- a small forest -- perhaps one month ago. Incidentally, around the same time that people began spraying their yards again. There are no local squirrels in my yard even though a woods is close, there is shelter and much habitat provided by a huge several huge oaks, a beech, a dawn sequoia, plum trees, flowering pear , a towering weeping cherry, and much sassafras and other trees.
My tulips are gorgeous this year because no one is eating them. It is so distressing not to see squirrels anywhere when I walk my dog in the 2 mile circle around the neighborhood. I miss their chattering, clucking and chucking at me -- like a teenage sucking his teeth. I miss their scratchy noise as they chase each other around a tree's bark, and of course, I miss their acrobatics, jumping from limb to limb. This disappearance began over winter as fewer and fewer seem to bother the suet and the black oil sunflower seeds. I don't understand what happened to them. I am sad. Image from last year, 2012.

Grey Squirrel. Massachusetts

A Prolific Summer

We have so many chipmunks, rabbits, squirrels, opossum and skunks this year  -- perhaps due to the wild growth of vegetation around us, that recently we spotted a fisher, a mammal seen in Connecticut but not this far north generally. Yes, I have been feeding the the squirrels and chipmunks. And by way of my garden, the rabbits.

New Bug in the Neighborhood

Looks like a Pleasing Fungus but I read they don't go north passed Florida.
This is New England. Maybe I'll submit this bug to the bug guy. We have had an incredible number of Mushrooms....
Later that evening.... Just opened my Audubon Field Guide (forgot I had it!) and found the Tomentus Burying Beetle. I think I have a match! 

Heavenly Movements

Still Seeing Small

This summer I've experienced a shift in how I see the world. Maybe it's the wisdom of dog being passed onto me from Morris -- we walk, he sniffs, I wait -- what's in front of one's nose is most important. I am focused on what's in front of me: small insects, mushrooms -- I never thought about mushrooms with such excitement. Suddenly they are appearing everywhere and different kinds, so many that I can barely learn their names. I am in awe of people who study them and --as if I've stepped off a precipace -- I could change my life and devote my time to these resilient little entities. (oh, that picture is a robin's egg, not a blue mushroom. Each time I discovered a mushroom, I run for the camera. But I think: What will I do come winter? I can see myself writing about them, and painting them, but I do not want to make paintings that are cute, quaint. The mushroom is too mysterious and otherworldly. Today I found a group of white mushrooms in the woods and when I took their pictures the pixels glowed around them.

Time of the Butterflies.

Swallowtails, Monarchs, small hummingbirds, all passing by too briefly.