Twelve Moons of the Year. June (02)

Significant sentences from The Twelve Moons of the Year by Hal Borland, a chronology of the New England seasons. (June 02)

"The chorus of birdsong diminishes, as always when hot days come, though it still is heard in the cool of morning and evening." p. 166.

"A brown thrasher feeds its nestlings as many as 6,000 insects a day." p. 166.

"A pair of barn swallows catches and feeds 1,000 leaf hoppers to its young in one day." p. 166.

"A house wren feeds 500 spiders and small caterpillars to her nestful in one afternoon." p. 166.

"A Baltimore oriole takes as many as 100 caterpillars to her woven pouch of a nest in one hour." p. 166.

"A yellow-shafted flicker will dispose of 5,000 ants between noon and sundown." p. 166.

"English sparrows eat Japanese beetles by the thousand and feed as many more to their young." p. 166.

"In June...we would linger and have the sun, and time itself, stand still." p. 167.

"Bee-drone days and firefly nights will pass." p. 167.

"Fireflies sparkle the evening." p. 168.

"There is a common and accepted fiction that fishermen go fishing to catch fish." p. 170.

"Yet it's rally the dawn world that a fisherman goes out to see...full of robin song...." p. 170.

"The darkness comes and the warm summer night is filled with winking lights of mystery." p. 171.

"We can now name the chemicals that seem to create the fireflies' heatless fire, and we can say the process is something like an enzyme action...but the fact remains that we don't know why or precisely how the firefly creates light." p. 171.

"...fireflies make a special magic of the warm summer night...like a host of winking stars come down to spangle the night and create the incredible ballet of soft light." p. 171.

"These are firefly nights...."

'The bats are fluttery, shadowy; they trick the eye, deceive the watcher, as they swoop into sight and vanish utterly...play hide and seek with the darkness." p. 172.

"The ruby-throated hummingbird...not much bigger than a bumble bee, its base the size of a walnut shell, its eggs...no bigger than fat garden peas...lives onnectar and miniature insects...its annual migration to Mexico...crosses the Gulf of Mexico, flying some 500 miles nonstop." p. 174.