Now we have June, the month of the summer solstice, the longest day of the year and the full Lovers' Moon.

In the woods and along the roads and fencerows are so many shades of green now that I can't count them all. The late nature writer Hal Borland said of June: "Every field, every meadow, every roadside is now rich with the proof of sustaining abundance, evidence that the earth is essentially a hospitable place no matter what follies man may commit."

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (ENLARGE)

The red-eyed vireo is Georgia's champion all-day singer, a summer nester whose song seems to repeat itself nonstop.

Richard Van Vleck / Special (ENLARGE)

The big brown bat is one of several common bat species having babies this month in Georgia.

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June's days seem literally to vibrate with adult birds singing in the trees and baby birds tweeting and twittering in their nests — even in our chimneys, where baby chimney swifts are being reared by their parents. American robins, cardinals, tanagers, orioles, wrens, mockingbirds, catbirds, and brown thrashers seem to sing much of the day.

On moonlit nights, mockingbirds sing even into the wee hours of morning. The plaintive calls of chuck-will's-widows and whippoorwills, the essence of summer nights in Georgia, can be heard coming from the woods in the evenings.

Without question, though, Georgia's champion all-day singer is the red-eyed vireo, one of our most common summer-nesting songbirds.

"From the time it arrives in the spring [from winter grounds in South America] until late summer, it sings throughout the entire day," said the late Georgia ornithologist Thomas Burleigh. "There are undoubtedly intervals when it is quiet, but the impression it gives is that of a bird that never tires as it repeats the short phrases that comprise its song."

Its propensity to seemingly repeat itself nonstop is a reason that the red-eyed vireo, so-named because of its red eye ring, also is nicknamed the "preacher bird."

June in Georgia

Here's a sample of what else is happening in Georgia's wilds during June:

• On undisturbed barrier beaches and sandy islands, colonies of black skimmers, least terns, oyster catchers, laughing gulls and other shorebirds are nesting. In the salt marshes, clapper rails (marsh hens), seaside sparrows and marsh wrens are tending nests in endless expanses of Spartina, or smooth cordgrass. Diamondback terrapins, the only reptile that lives in the salt marsh, are laying eggs. Loggerhead sea turtles are crawling ashore on the beaches at night to lay their eggs in the sand.

• In the sandhills and piney flatwoods of Middle and South Georgia, gopher tortoise nesting is at its peak. Usually several feet deep, a tortoise burrow also is important to other creatures — including several species of frogs and snakes — that use it for shelter. One of them, the endangered Eastern indigo snake, is laying its eggs now in tortoise burrows, under logs and in other suitable habitat.

• Another "keystone species," the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker, is nesting in mature South Georgia pine forests. It's called a keystone species because more than 25 other species, including flying squirrels and Eastern bluebirds, use its abandoned cavities for shelter or nesting.

• Great blue heron chicks are starting to fledge in rookeries all over Georgia.

• In rookeries in South Georgia, the babies of wood storks (endangered), great egrets, tri-colored herons, anhingas and other waterbirds also are fledging. At many of the rookeries, alligators lurk in the water below the nests, waiting for a young bird to accidentally tumble out.

• In the Okefenokee Swamp, chorus, green tree, pig, carpenter and over a dozen other frog species are heard during the evenings. White waterlilies and sweet bay flowers bloom. Female alligators are building nests.

• Ruby-throated hummingbirds' nesting season is peaking and will be mostly over by the end of June. By then, they will be extra hungry and will swarm to feeders to fatten up for fall migration.

• Eighteen-month-old black bears are leaving their mothers to make it on their own. Adult bear mating season is in full swing.

• Newborn spotted fawns of white-tailed deer may be seen closely following their mothers. Bucks are growing antlers, which are covered with a thin, velvety skin until summer's end.

• Babies of several of Georgia's common bat species — including Eastern pipistrelle, little brown and big brown bats — are being born.

• The second mating period of the year (the first was in January) for Georgia's three squirrel species — Eastern gray, flying and fox squirrels — is at its peak now. Raccoon mating season is winding down.

• Fireflies are starting to light up; in a few weeks, when days and nights turn hotter, cicadas will begin their droning song of summer.

• Some mountain wildflowers blooming this month: Queen Anne's lace, tall meadow rue, whorled loosestrife, saxifrage, spiderwort, rattlesnake plantain, black cohosh, false hellebore, fleabane and others.

In the sky

The moon will be new on Tuesday and thus can't be seen. By Thursday night, look for the thin crescent moon just after sunset, says astronomer David Dundee with the Northwest Georgia Museum of Sciences. Mars is in the western sky just after dark and appears near the moon on Saturday night. Jupiter rises out of the east an hour after sunset. Saturn is in the southwest at dusk. Mercury and Venus are not easily observed this month.