Birds, bad weather, bugs and books

Yesterday was the least pleasant Breeding Bird Survey I have run in about 12 years. The overcast morning looked alright when I started at 4:55 am, but at 5:30 a steady breeze came up. This is a critical problem because wind in the woods makes a lot of noise, and the data depends mostly on identification of bird songs (most years I hear about 50 species, but I'm lucky to see 10). After three noisy stops I was ready to give up and try again this morning, but then the route moved away from Lake of Bays, the breeze died down, and I could hear birds again. About 6:30 it started to drizzle, but not enough to discourage me or the birds. I just hoped the rain would remain discrete. It didn't. Around 7:45 it became a proper shower, not heavy enough to make me wet, but the sound in the woods was overwhelming. I sat in the car for 15 minutes hoping it would abate, but one mustn't waste much time, because bird activity declines about four hours after sunrise even on the best days. Again, I started to think I would have to give up on three hours of data collection. I did three more stops because they were on my way back to the cottage anyway. Then, the rain stopped. Over the rest of the route I had a few more issues with weather, but I finished. Altogether I noted "excessive noise" at 10 of 50 locations. Add to that the worst plague of mosquitoes I've ever had to endure. Normally I don't mind them, but this year I could barely stand outside the car for three minutes at a time. I hope the results will suffice for this year, because I wasn't keen on getting up at 3:50 again this morning and doing it all over again. In 12 years of running this route on a morning close to the summer solstice, I had never had more than a spit of rain.

Otherwise, it was a wonderful Saturday. I have not had a day more relaxing, restful and productive of writing in months and months. I savoured some cheap red wine and moderately expensive cheese, finished an uninspiring book of short stories by Anne Beattie, and ploughed through the first half of a wondefully inspiring book on writing, which I will address in another post. I snoozed not once but three times, probably bringing my total daytime naps in 2011 to five. At dusk my eyes were bleary from so much reading and writing, so I took a chair down on the dock and just sat for close to an hour. There is nothing I would rather watch than the evening clouds roll on, and gentle play of light on Lake Fletcher. Mosquitoes and blackflies were few, but dragonflies stalked some little fluttery insects trying to deposit eggs across the languid water.

This morning the sun came out and there were butterflies in the road. Scores of white admirals like these. I'm afraid I dispatched a few of them when I drove away this afternoon.