It’s bug season. The largest of the Northeast’s moths, the luna moth (Actias luna) will make it’s brief appearance about this time, drawn to light with the other moths. Often over four inches wide (the record is seven), these moths undergo a many-staged life cycle, and adults live just a week. With no mouth parts to eat with, the beautiful luna devotes it’s short life to reproduction, laying fertilized eggs on the underside of leaves. For unknown reasons, west coast luna moths have one generation per year while in many areas on the east coast there are two.

Whitetail deer fawns (Odocoileus virginianus) know how to hold still. Mothers of twins will keep them in two locations to foil predators. The super-camouflaged fawns freeze, sometimes for hours, until they hear the doe’s command. She will nurse one, then the other, never both at once.

Some guys are just a bundle of energy. The male redstart (Setophaga ruticilla) weighs just 8 or 9 grams, migrates from the Caribbean, and rarely stops moving in his pursuit of insect prey. Plus he often has two mates nesting as much as a quarter-mile apart, with separate territories to defend. One banded redstart returned to the same territory in New Hampshire nine years in a row.

The star-nosed mole (Condylura cristata) gives birth just once a year, unless a litter is lost to predation or flooding (the excellent swimmer is found near streams and lowland marshes). They are the only remaining members of their genus and tribe. They and their extinct relatives are studied intently, mainly for their noses, which have 22 super-sensitive feelers (with taste and smell organs on them) arranged in a star shape. No other animal exceeds the star-nosed mole in sensitivity to vibration, temperature, and touch; their reactions to minute seismic vibrations have kept scientists busy for 100 years.

New England hosts two foxes, the grey and the red. Easy, right? No. The red fox (Vulpes vulpes) is a rock star—the largest member of it’s genus, Vulpes; the most widely distributed in its order, Carnivora; almost the most important animal in the fur trade; and, in Austrailia, a banned invasive species. The red fox and his subspecies do not always dress in red, so a grey-looking fox could be either. The grey fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus), is not a “true fox” (a Vulpes), but it can be positively identified in three ways: a ridge of black guard hairs on the tail; oval, rather than slitted, pupils; and it’s habit of climbing trees, the only North American canid to do so. It is also the most primitive and unchanged of the original canids, a regular living fossil.

Broadwing hawks (Buteo platypterus) are hard to see this whole month. Their chicks are hatching, in a nest that is often very high in a tree. They keep a low profile until the chicks fledge.

It’s the beginning of the firefly (family Lampyridae) displays. They will run through July in most areas. With 2,000 species of firefly (or lightning bug) worldwide, we have three or four here in the Northeast; they can be distinguished by their flashing pattern.

June is when the brown-headed cowbirds (Molothrus ater) lay eggs. They don’t bother building a nest, they just lay a dozen or more eggs in the nests of other species. It seems to work for them: they are widespread. June is also the most likely month to see snapping turtles (Chelydra serpentina). They are on the prowl, looking for nesting sites with light soil or gravel, not often found in their pond-edge foraging grounds. June bugs (genus Phyllophaga) show up around homes and street lights. Members of this genus (260 or so) vary only a little in their appearance and behavior. Black or reddish brown, these nocturnal beetles are drawn to the light like a moth, but can die from exposure to light for too long. That’s why their dead bodies are found on porches and driveways.

Eastern bluebirds (Sialia sialis) are hatching the first of two broods. Spring fledglings will leave their parents by summertime, but young from the later brood may overwinter with their parents. Bluebirds mostly migrate, some as far as 2000 miles, some not at all.