Chimney Swifts!

You'd usually find unique birds in a forest, but towns and cities are these guys' forests! They dart around the tops of buildings so high in the sky and chittering so energetically!! They fly like little boomerangs! You hear their noise and look up and they are there!!

Destroying Angel - Amanita Bisporigera

Eastern Newt - Notophthalmus viridescens

Excerpt from this story from Grist:

At first glance, Upstate New York might not look like it has a problem with precipitation. After all, when Americans think of the term “drought,” chances are they think of the Western U.S. — dead lawns, disappearing reservoirs, and shrinking snowpack. But low rainfall is also an issue for other parts of the country, including the Northeast, that many people don’t necessarily associate with dryness.

This summer, rainfall has been relatively absent from many parts of the Northeast. New England has been particularly affected: For the first time in seven years, all of Massachusetts is currently experiencing some level of drought – a “flash” development based on conditions over the last few weeks. All of New York City is also experiencing drought conditions, with some areas considered to be in severe drought, as rainfall totals remain well below typical levels for the summer months. 

“Different parts of the country have different ‘normal’ amounts of rainfall,” said Nick Bassill, Director of Research and Development at the Center for Excellence in Weather and Climate Analytics at State University of New York at Albany. “If you’re down like 10 inches on the year in Las Vegas that is almost all the rainfall that you would get, versus here in Albany normally we get 50 inches of rain.”

Brittlestems - destroying angel - violet cort - rooting shank(?)