Remember when I posted about this year's Naturefest in April & how it rained for much of the weekend? On Sunday afternoon when the thunderstorm had effectively shut down the exhibit & no one was left in the nature center but artists & employees, I went to the door at the side of the center & looked out. It was warm and pouring down rain, though the thunder & lightning had stopped.So I stepped out onto the tiny porch, which is under the roof of the building. Everything was green and wet, all the people were gone. The only creature around was a Canada Goose in the river, which runs alongside the nature center. It so calm & peaceful, I tried to soak up as much of the feeling as I could, for I wanted to keep it in a special place in my memory, so I could take it out in stressful times. The raindrops made big splashes in the water & the light was that certain whiteness that happens only at the end of rainstorms.
     All too soon a mom & toddler came out & sat on the steps, she said the sound of rain usually put her little boy to sleep. I politely greeted her & hoped that it worked, but the mood was broken & I went back inside.
     I took a few photos when I was out there alone, they can't capture the feeling entirely, but they give you hints. And the view was lovely anyways.
     

   My newest review is up at Vulpes Libris, it's on Steven Solomon's book "Water", about how that substance has shaped human history. It was a complex subject but really interesting book. If you'd like to read more about it, here's the link= http://bit.ly/bOM1gd

  On Thurs. afternoon, I carried a bag of books out to the car with the intent to go to the library. My tire was flat again, so I attached the battery powered inflator which takes about 5 minutes to reinflate a tire. While I was waiting I saw something on the floor & went over to find 3 baby birds on the garage floor fluttering their wings. They had fallen out of the bar swallow nest in the rafters of the garage. There was even tinier babies farther laying down the garage. I grabbed a paper bag from my car & put the 3 bigger ones in it. And gathered up the 6 or 7 tiny ones, all of which felt cold onto a cardboard cup holder & took them all out to a nature center that rehabs wildlife.
   The tiny ones were indeed dead, but the rehab guy put the 3 live ones in an incubator, but he said they looked as if they were wounded & the one was breathing raspily.He couldn't finger out why so many had "fallen" out of the nest at once. I suspect one of the custodians, since he's made disparaging remarks about animals in the newsletters. And in March he smashed all of the swallow nests in the garages. It was too systematic to be anything other than humanly done.I've lived here since 1982 & those nests have never been broken like that, until the new custodian started in January.
  Swallows return to the same nests year after year in May & stay until Sept. before migrating to South America  for the winter. The guy at the nature center said that it's illegal to bother birds or their nest and offspring, that they are covered under the Songbird Protection Act. If I didn't know that, then I bet other residents & the custodians don't know it either, so there needs to be some education about that.
    Below is a photo I took of a nest last year, it's in the same location where the bigger babies fell from this year. The nests are about 8 feet up, just a few inches below the ceilings.The blue fuzz at the top are the baby birds' heads.
     When I contacted the nature center Friday & Saturday, the rehabber said they "were doing well" which was surprising & happy news. I'm going to continue to check up on them & hope that they're eventually released when they are grown up enough.