Wissahickon Nature Club       2009

 
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Meetings have concluded for the season, but Nature Walks continue....

Click here for the story of the Wissahickon Nature Club

                                                                  

 
                                 July


By John Guilday
Courtesy of Alice Guilday




            The pond no longer vibrates to the cold-blooded chorus of early summer.  The twang of a green frog and the slap of a beaver tail flat on the stinging surface are all that break its silence now, but swarms of fat black tadpoles in the shallows speak well for the fertility of the vanished choristers.  The buck's horns are soft and he treats his fur-sheathed weapons with care lest they snag and bleed.  Fawns are spotted still, but mouth at the meadow grass in-between-meals.  The garden-hose weasel threads the mouse runs for hot-blooded meat to feed her squealing brood and soon returns with a paunchy meadow mouse.  At night, a pale green luna moth, big as a hand, drifts through the whip-poor-willed July, while far above him, teetering on the rim of a knothole, a shaky young flying squirrel tries to make up his mind.  In the swamp, the skunk cabbage hides all in a loose, deep sea of tropical lushness.  The greens darken and lose their freshness.  The high tide of the year is reached but does not yet recede.


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