Val Cunningham

This is the season when black bears gorge themselves on wild foods (and anything else they can find) to put on fat to carry them through their long winter sleep. Three recent photos sent by readers show that they also have an affinity for water. In each case, a trail camera caught the action near a water feature.

Late summer is the season for insects: So many adults are emerging from chrysalises, cocoons, or larval forms, from the water or ground or underside of a leaf. This is especially true in the butterfly world, where chubby, crawling caterpillars are morphing into beautiful, winged adults.

Chuck Kartak was watching an osprey nest just as a parent came in with a meal for its twins. These fish hawks are experts at snagging their prey, ending up with a fish at least once every four dives, sometimes more frequently.

This is the sweetest time of year for many creatures. The hectic breeding season is just about finished, and life is slowing down a bit.
The living is easier in the second half of summer, with plenty of food available to feed youngsters and parents. Rita Tepley snapped an adult red-bellied woodpecker (more extravagantly red than is usual for this species) stuffing grape jelly down its paler offspring’s throat.

A line of ducklings following their mother is a familiar sight on summer’s lakes and ponds, but look more closely at the group in Bob Hilbert’s photo. He named this photo “Woodies and Hoodies,” because those ducklings paddling after a hooded merganser represent two different species – some are wood ducks, some are mergansers.

Some young birds look like smaller versions of their parents, such as killdeer and chickadees. But in others the resemblance is so strained that parents and offspring look like different species.

Sometimes the best scenes are the ones that flash by out the corner of your eye. Bob Hilbert was driving in a heavily forested area when he saw a dark lump in a roadside shrub. Backing up, the lump became a very young porcupine dining on leaf buds, and its tail (where skin-piercing quills are located in adults), “was still very short,” Hilbert said.

This pair of fox kits might be planning to bite off more than they can chew. Truth to tell, according to photographer Rich Carlson, the kits were probably surprised as they came out of their burrow to find a goose nearby. He said all three left the field without any drama.

One common sight in spring is a line of goslings paddling after a parent on a local lake or stream, as in Mary Krueger’s photo. Having seen dozens of these “goose trains,” I’ve still never noticed the scene she captured. “It made me chuckle to see goslings honking for Mama’s attention.”