Everyone had the same idea. Beat the heat!

6:30 a.m. Barely perused the lower gardens on arrival. Our usual friends were there - house wrens, catbirds, song sparrows and robins but as I headed to the upper gardens, I came across the fawn that Duane had mentioned seeing. Here it is with it's mom. Had I not taken out my camera, I feel we could have stared at each other for a very long time, but the noise of the shutter spooked them and off they galloped making loud noises with their hooves.

At the edge of the upper gardens next to the meadow, I spotted Lucy, our special song sparrow with white on the wings singing away, which made me suspect that it's a male after all, but Lucy still seems like a good name for it.

Before I even had a chance to look at the birds, I was surprised to see a red fox ambling out from the woods at the top of the upper gardens. I think it saw me for it was very cautious and kept looking in my direction. I couldn't get too close for fear of sending it back to the woods, but I did manage to get a picture.

I saw that Ian had arrived and after a quick walk on the swamp path (which yielded only the song of the common yellowthroat and lots of mosquitos) met him down in the lower gardens. We went together back to the upper gardens where we saw Mrs. B in her box and Mr. B flying around. Eventually, they hung out together on the bare branch tree they seem to enjoy near the compost pile. We saw all our regular friends like the catbirds, song sparrows, goldfinches, yellow warblers etc.

We walked down to the soccer field where we heard the warbling vireo and saw a song sparrow and of course lots of robins. As we neared the pond, we inadvertently frightened the large blue heron and what Ian thought was most likely a green heron into the trees. I'm so glad the herons are here now. After walking down to the river and up through Woodcock meadow, we were hoping they might have resettled in the pond, but not today.

Back near the parking lot, we saw a chipping sparrow and a female cowbird hanging out on the rail of the chain link fence. By 8:00, the humidity was getting beastly. Queen Anne's lace is in full bloom, along with Black-Eyed Susans.