Talk about timing!

My nephew and niece visited today, along with my brother. They live in New Jersey, in an area where there are no deer.

But when you’re just 3 and you think you’re looking at Bambi — THE. ACTUAL. BAMBI. — well, let’s just say the deer that visited my yard today thrilled my niece. My nephew, who’s 7, also enjoyed the up-close-and-personal visitors. We were telling the kids about these particular deer only an hour or two earlier, and then, there they were.

At my house, we’re pretty used to seeing deer and this mama and her babes have stopped by the backyard several times since spring. Overall, it was a great visit with the kids, my brother, and even the deer. It would have been perfect if it hadn’t been for the yellow jackets I apparently angered later in the day while trimming some front yard hedges. They got me good — at least five stings.

Actually I say si-key-duh, as in cicada. As red-winged blackbirds are always a spring-is-here sound to me, the buzz of a cicada’s wings always signify the hot, hazy days of summer. I’ve been hearing them a lot for about a week now.

The cicadas you hear every year are known as dog-day cicadas, a reference, like the dog days of summer, to appearing when the star Sirius once rose along with the sun. There are also the periodic cicadas, which emerge every 13 or 17 years.

The buzzing whirr sound is made by males who are looking for females for, ahem, you know.

Then there’s the potential for jewelry.

(The TJN photo shows a cicada in the Marshlands Conservancy in Rye.)

Some 1.5 million deer never get out of the headlights and get clobbered by cars each year – no comfort, I’m sure, to the drivers who hit them, either – according to some federal statistics I found.

One of those dead deer ended up in my front yard the other day. Once daylight came, it took the local vultures almost 12 hours before they showed up for their meal. The deer — a female who was recently nursing some young — was too close for comfort to the road for this turkey vulture to dig in. He made a few attempts but would get flustered by passing vehicles.

Turkey vultures use their sense of smell to find food. Their cousins, black vultures, rely on sight or follow turkey vultures.

The highway department eventually showed up and took the carcass away, which was good because I wasn’t relishing cutting the grass around it.

Demarest Kill Park is the next destination in the season-long guided walk program sponsored by Rockland County.

The walk starts at 9 a.m. Saturday. The parking lot is off New Hempstead Road in New City, near the county Sheriff’s Department.

New walkers and families will find the walk, less than a half-mile in length, easy and picturesque. Walkers will head around the Demarest Pond and can check out the waterfall.

Part of the loop takes walkers on a path through woods, and part is on a paved surface. Leashed dogs are welcome, but be prepared to use one of the park-provided doggie bags to collect fido’s unmentionables.

The park’s highlights include lush trees, a pond active with water fowl and the occasional turtle, early summer wildflowers, and benches where walkers can rest.

I shot this photo at the park this morning.

Unfortunately, natural beauty won’t be the only thing visitors see. Some have taken it upon themselves to mar one of God’s finest gifts to us — trees. Parents might try explaining to their kids that treating such gifts in this manner is just plain wrong.

The spray paint has been on these trees, including those that have been further scarred by carving, for at least two years. The vandals also hit some of the benches, but the county Parks Department was able to remove most of the paint from the seats.

The guided walking program is meant to encourage physical activity and to show people that numerous safe walking environments are located close to their homes.

The program’s sponsors include the county Division of Environmental Resources, the county Youth Bureau’s AmeriCorps Program, and the county Health Department’s Steps to a HealthierNY program. 

The walk is free and takes place rain or shine. Wear proper footwear and clothing and bring water and sunscreen.

Get more info about upcoming walks, including driving directions, by calling 845-708-7307. Get a brochure with walking and trail information here.

If a tree falls in your yard while you’re on the other side of the house, does it make a sound? It does. Two, actually. The first is the thunderous crash and cracking of branches as it hits the ground. The second is you saying: “C@#$! What was that?”

This tree came down last night, inches from my vegetable garden. I was on the other side of the house, about to turn the hose on to water the garden. I blame the woodchucks, who, in some axis-of-evil act of sabotage tried to crush the electric fence.

Actually, the stump looks pretty rotten. I think its a cherry tree of some sort. Needless to say, I now have a lot of cutting, splitting and stacking to do and less firewood to buy this year.

This time of year brings a different kind of fireworks for black bears, according to this recent story in the Hartford Courant.

“The bear activity that picks up this time of year is mostly driven by dominant males who are not eating and have this huge testosterone increase while they are searching for females to breed,” according to a Connecticut wildlife biologist.

Before I enjoyed a terrific family barbecue today, I headed over to Kakiat Park in Montebello.

It being a holiday and all, I’d promised the dog some quality time at her favorite park. Seriously, of all the parks we hit, she seems to love Kakiat the most. I think it’s due to the decent number of other dogs that visit. She seems to enjoy socializing with the other canine visitors. (But if I try to talk to somebody for more than 30 seconds, she carries on, tugs the leash, gives little barking noises, anything to get my attention and continue with the walk – or should I say, HER walk.)

Spring flowers have vacated the park, but some new summer species are starting to arrive.

Here are two I saw today.

Unfortunately, I can’t locate my thick “Audubon Guide to Wildflowers” just now. A look through my thinner “Peterson First Guide to Wildflowers” suggests the first flower is a hedge bindweed, a member of the wild morning glory family. I had no luck finding a possible ID on the second, but hey, it’s a nice looking species. I’ll try digging up the ID tomorrow, after I’ve had a chance to hunt for my Audubon guide.

An animal no bigger than a decent-sized roast was the undoing of a levee last week in Missouri, leading to the flooding of one town along the Mississippi River. Authorities blamed a burrowing muskrat for breaching a levee. Its small hole allowed the river to penetrate the levee and eventually lead to its failure.

I spotted this muskrat in a tributary to the Hudson River on Sunday. He was making several trips back and forth across the stream, cutting down some plants on one bank and swimming back to the other side with his bundle of green. There, he would disappear into a hole in the bank.

Here’s a Web page with a whole bunch of muskrat-related links.

I guess I missed this commercial at Super Bowl time but I got such a chuckle out of the screaming animals when I saw it recently that I had to go find the spot on YouTube. I especially like how the mouse lets it all hang out in delivering his scream, standing on his tiptoes.

I used my car as a hiding spot the other evening and pulled up right next to the hummingbird feeder. Below is a short clip of a hummingbird, um, feeding at the feeder. Here’s an earlier post about hummingbirds.

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