This morning as I sat on the back steps with my coffee, the male wren sang a young fledgling out of the wren house for its first flight. We’d noticed the night before lots of singing and movement by the male wren, and saw little movements back in the house and, occasionally, a little beak and head coming partway out of the entrance hole. That young’un was finally coaxed out this morning. That house has seen 2 clutches of chickadees and 2 of wrens this summer!

Sunday- There was yet another wren to come out of the house. He emerged this morning.

This summer we have not had the numbers of bees or butterflies or caterpillars or butterfly larvae we had last year. Worrisome. But today I did find some lacewing eggs and some ladybug larvae on some tall coneflowers on the west side of our house. Both insect species are there to feast on all the aphids that have taken up residence on the coneflowers.