Hello Cayugabirders, My almost daily walks take me up Mt Pleasant Rd, Ithaca/Dryden, and along the dirt road toward the communication towers. Recently I've been enjoying checking out the numerous small milkweed plants along the dirt road for signs of Monarch caterpillars (found a few) and watching the few Monarch adults flitting about. But in the last couple of days the roadsides up here are being mowed, so I was in a royal snit yesterday since it looked from a distance that the dirt road edges had been mowed along with that precious caterpillar nursery. Today I took a closer look, though, and to my delight the mower had studiously avoided mowing the milkweeds, instead swerving in and out to mow just the grass! That's a wonderful surprise and evidence that someone has a heart and maybe there is a glimmer of hope for the natural world. THANK YOU to whoever that thoughtful and caring mower was.
Marie Marie Read 452 Ringwood Road Freeville NY 13068 USA http://www.marieread.com -- (copy & paste any URL below, then modify any text "_DOT_" to a period ".") Cayugabirds-L List Info: NortheastBirding_DOT_com/CayugabirdsWELCOME_DOT_htm NortheastBirding_DOT_com/CayugabirdsRULES_DOT_htm NortheastBirding_DOT_com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave_DOT_htm ARCHIVES: 1) mail-archive_DOT_com/cayugabirds-l@cornell_DOT_edu/maillist_DOT_html 2) surfbirds_DOT_com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) aba_DOT_org/birding-news/ Please submit your observations to eBird: ebird_DOT_org/content/ebird/ --
