natureswondersbyclyde

     We stayed a few days in a motel bordering a golf course in the peaceful country of the beautiful Shenandoah Valley near staunton, Virginia.  Of course the golf course landscape was carpeted by regularly mowed grass, studded with rows of planted white pine trees, and sported a quarter-acre pond, partly flanked with thickets of young trees, shrubbery, vines and weeds, all of which I could see from our second story motel room.  The thickets partly-shrouding the pond were the only real wildlife habitat on the golf course, but I wanted to experience what adaptable creatures could live on a golf course.       When I could, I sat by the window of our motel room with a 16 power pair of binoculars and watched for wildlife on the neighboring golf course, which was no wildlife sanctuary.  But I was curious to know what wildlife could live on that mostly manicured, human-made habitat, and other golf courses like it.       ...

     White-tailed deer are entering their rut, or breeding time, in early October in southeastern Pennsylvania, as elsewhere.  At that time they are more visible than any other time of year because they move around more, the females in little groups, looking for mates, and are less cautions.  Throughout the year, however, they are most safe in suburban areas where hunting is not allowed.          Through the seasons, over many years, I have enjoyed seeing the adaptable, stately white-tails, in the flesh, browsing on twigs, buds and leaves in local woods and older suburban areas with their many planted trees and shrubbery, and grazing on grass, hay, and corn and soybean leaves in croplands.  And, in recent years, I enjoy seeing white-tailed deer, close-up, every day, day and night, by live cameras in wildlife refuges and our computer screen.        To me, white-tailed deer are the most elegant, graceful,...

      Being related from a common ancestor, woodpeckers, worldwide, have unique characteristics in common, including two toes in front of each foot and two in back and stiff tail feathers that prop each bird upright on vertical tree trunks.  They all have sturdy, chisel-like beaks that chip into dead wood of trees to extract and ingest invertebrates.  And they all excavate hollows in trees or large cacti with their bills, in which they raise young.  See the attractive feather patterns of these woodpeckers, and their ranges, in a field guide or on a computer.         But five species of woodpeckers in North America, including northern flickers, yellow-bellied sapsuckers, acorn woodpeckers, white-headed woodpeckers and Lewis' woodpeckers have mostly diverged their menus from invertebrates in dead wood of trees to other kinds of foods.  By consuming other foods, these woodpeckers reduce competition for sustenance with their relati...

      Brown thrashers are "eastern roadrunners".  These thrashers mostly feed on invertebrates, seeds and berries on the ground, and usually run rapidly from danger, rather than fly.  But one summer afternoon, I was watching a handsome brown thrasher flipping leaves and scratching about for seeds and invertebrates in the soil of a lawn just outside a woodland.  He had warm-brown feathering on top, as all brown thrashers do, which camouflages them on the ground.        Suddenly a red-shouldered hawk swooped down toward that thrasher with the intent to kill it for a meal.  I thought the thrasher was doomed.  But the intended victim flew up toward, but under, the hawk and winged low across the lawn to the woods where it disappeared.  The hawk overshot the thrasher and by the time that predator swung around, its intended prey was long gone.  I thought, "clever thrasher".      At other times, over the y...

      During late summer, through autumn and into winter, I see lots of attractive grasses along roadsides, and in pumpkin and soybean fields, abandoned fields and excavation sites in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania farmland.  Most of those grasses are green foxtails, yellow foxtails, timothy, goose grass and purple tops, the last kind being the prettiest in fall in my mind.        All these abundant grasses have characteristics in common.  They are all adapted to disturbed soil and full sunlight.  All are originally from Europe, except native purple tops.  They can be up to four feet tall, have long, slender leaves and decorative seed heads, loaded with small seeds, on top of thin stalks.  These grasses help hold down soil in cropland, and provide food and shelter for a variety of wildlife, from grasshoppers to cottontail rabbits and white-tailed deer that ingest their foliage, and mice and small, seed-eating birds that co...

      My favorite Lancaster County, Pennsylvania habitat is thickets of shrubbery, young trees, vines, and tall grasses and flowering plants in hedgerows, and along the edges of rural roads, railways and woodlands during September.  For an hour every week, from late-August to mid-September, this year, I visited a quarter-mile thicket squeezed between a country road and a woodland to watch for nature's progression into autumn, and preparations for winter.  That thicket habitat is always interesting to study because of the ample food and shelter it offers wildlife the year around.  This September, it has a few kinds each of lovely wildflowers, pollinating insects, brightly-hued berries, colored leaves on deciduous trees, and migrating insects and birds.        The dominate trees of this thicket include black gums, red maples, tulip trees, pin oaks and white oaks, all being bottomland trees that do well in constantly moist soil.  ...