natureswondersbyclyde

      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.  ...

      Though unrelated species, Namaqua sandgrouse and gray gulls have characteristics in common.  Both kinds of these birds are noted for nesting in deserts, the sandgrouse in South African deserts and the gulls in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile.  Both areas harbor few predators that would eat the eggs or young of these birds.  Even so, the eggs, young and adults of both species are well camouflaged to blend into their sand surroundings for the birds' protection against predators.  Water for the chicks is a problem, however.  But each species has a unique way of providing water to their youngsters in sand nests on the floors of those desert habitats.       Flocks of sandgrouse, males and females, daily commute swiftly several miles, roundtrip, to desert water holes.  They land as one body in inch-deep water where they drink their fill of fresh water; safety in numbers.  A few hawks persist in catching sandgrous...

      Barn swallows, tree swallows and other kinds of swallows live and migrate across much of North and South America.  And barn swallows, and house martins, which are another species of swallow, live and migrate between Europe and Africa.  These swallows migrate from central Africa, north over the Sahara Desert to nest in Europe during spring, and do the opposite in late summer to spend the winter in Africa.           But getting across the Sahara would be a big problem for both these species if there were not palm tree-lined oases among the unending and dry sand dunes along the way.   Those swallows get food and drink from those oases that will refresh them, and sustain them in their travels.  Without those oases that bubble to the surface, here and there, from ground water, the swallows would die along the way.        Many oases, however, have water more salty than the oceans because it is stag...

     Rock-climbing napili gobies are seven-inch, amphidromous fish that are another of innumerable miracles on Earth.  They hatch in stony-bottomed, clear-running, freshwater streams in Hawaii's forested mountains and slopes, but are soon swept over waterfalls by the current and on down to the Pacific Ocean where they live as juveniles and filter-feed on plankton for about six months.  Then swarms of them swim back to the mouths of their nursery waterways where, within two days, their mouths turn down and become suction-cup-like, and they each develop a suction cup on each enlarged, front fin.  Now those juvenile gobies are ready to ascend wet, slippery rock walls right beside and just behind waterfalls on their birth waterways.  And what an arduous climb it is, too.      Alternately using their down-turned, sucker-like mouths and the suction cups on their front fins to create suction to adhere to the wet rocks, groups of them slowly inc...