Again this year my overgrown yard at the base of West Hill in the City of Ithaca supports a show of fireflies. We first noticed them yesterday evening and it's too soon to tell if numbers are down, but at least they are not missing.
Bats are scarce, though. We saw one during an early warm spell this spring, and we worried it might not have aerial plankton to sustain it. Then we saw none for weeks. Recently we've seen one on a few evenings but not every evening. In past years there were commonly 2 or 3 pretty reliably. It's possible that this year we are not out looking as diligently though. To redeem this as a birding post, I will add that this morning in an unusual occurrence a male Black-and-white Warbler visited our yard, singing persistently while foraging in a maple tree (okay, it was our neighbor's tree, but I'm still counting it!). Eventually his songs moved farther off to another yard down the street. I guess he was cruising rather than defending a territory. --Dave Nutter -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --