random jottings on a quiet Sunday morning

Random notes on a quiet Sunday morning:

--The cluck-cluck-clucking of a Green Heron sitting on the top of a Red Cedar back a ways from the marsh. suggesting that there is a Green Heron nest somewhere in the vicinity

--Young Catbirds, Common Yellowthroats and Song Sparrows are the most common birds in the shrub layer between the woods and the marsh; a noisy wren (not a Carolina, probably House Wren); only a few Barn Swallows and Royal Terns overhead

--Watching the underside of a Praying (Preying?) Mantis as it crawls up a porch screen, alternating the movement of its six legs, each with a little flexible extension at the end to hook onto the mesh of the screen as it moves up

--Trying to figure out the night insects of late summer: Katydids are loudest early in the night, less prominent later on and cut out after first light in the morning; Tree Crickets (?) provide the constant background hum (continuing into the light of dawn, well after the Katydids quit) with random interjections from something else (how to identify calling insects?)

Eric Salzman