In August

TRR photo by Ed Wesely Elise Wilkinson, a summer camper at Camp Skycrest, near White Mills, PA, prepares to release a monarch butterfly that hatched in our Butterfly Barn nature center.

Bon Voyage to the swallows. For me, summer ends when our resident barn swallows vanish during August’s dog days, about a month before the autumnal equinox.

Each year they measure their brief stay in our barn by a strict timetable. Late April is for inspecting and patching old nests or building new ones; June and July are for hatching, feeding and fledging two broods of four to five young. And whether it be a tropical summer, or cool and rainy, the second set of hatchlings in our barn must be fledged by mid-August.

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Tag and release monarchs

REGION—Ed Wesely from the Butterfly Barn in Milanville, PA will appear in August at a variety of locations to present a slide show and bring live monarchs to be tagged and released into the wild.

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Roundup® lethal to amphibians

PITTSBURGH, PA —Assistant professor of biological sciences Rick Relyea has discovered that Roundup ®, the most commonly used herbicide in the world, is deadly to tadpoles at lower concentrations than previously tested, that the presence of soil does not mitigate the chemical’s effects and that the product kills frogs in addition to tadpoles.

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Also in this issue:

• Hike the Appalachian Trail with Pinchot Audubon