We spent the fourth in Thomaston and it was the first mostly sunny day in a long time; while enjoying the front porch of Sherry’s mom’s log cabin, we were entertained by a constant group of chickadees and wrens feeding from a small group of bird feeders of different shapes and sizes. Every so often, we were surprised by a few other birds who were not as brave and not as plentiful. A mostly yellow bird, at first assumed to be a warbler but now believed to be an American goldfinch, was rarely around but we did get one photo.

Another bird of a sort and a new event for the Fourth of July festivities in town was Helicopter Rides! This machine made an uncountable number of sorties from the local high school field to Rockland Harbor and back, all day long. As the evening thunder-clouds approached, he kept shuttling back and forth; the last image below shows the front sliding by (this is looking south) and it was hours before any precipitation occurred.

We are not as good at identifying the make and model of the chopper but we expect brother Thom will report in at some point.

The automated rain gauge recorded over two and a half inches of rain for the week ending today; but an inch of this came down in a forty-five minute span on Thursday night. The rain pounding on the roof drowned out the sound of the thunder. The last month (June 2 to July 3) shows almost eight inches of rain – twice the monthly average. Today I confirmed my zucchini and sunflower seeds terminated from rot. Half the bean plants are dead: from slugs or some other leaf eating varmint associated with the wet weather.

7/11/2009: We have been advised that the alleged image of a wren at left is NOT A WREN! We concur; the research dept. is on it.