The Backyard and Beyond

A Bird-y Weekend

dickcissel

Dickcissel and Monarch butterfly

Dickcissel and Meadowlark singing together.

Dickcissel and Meadowlark singing together.

We could have spent the weekend working on projects around the house but decided that birding and hiking would be more fun. Yesterday we went for a drive in the morning south of Stoughton on some rural rounds to look for Dickcissels. We found a few and I got a couple decent pictures although they are rather shy birds and hard to get close enough to to photograph. In the evening we drove over to Lake Kegonsa State Park for a walk. We took Maisy along too. The first part of the walk is near the woods and the mosquitos were HORRENDOUS. We even had mosquito repellent which didn’t seem to make much of a difference. They were biting through our clothing. This morning we went to the Brooklyn Wildlife area to look for Bobolinks. We didn’t see any but did see more Dickcissels and Meadowlarks.

 


Sweltering in Stoughton

grilled sweet corn

A little char on the corn.

It’s been a steamy week—much too hot for my liking but we’ve just had some rain and it appears some relief is in sight for the weekend. No air conditioning for us so we’re relying on the fans and ice cream. I cooked new potatoes in foil and sweet corn on the grill so as not to heat up the house any more than the current indoor temperature of 88 degrees.