natureswondersbyclyde

     In the last few years, from early September to early November, I have been watching for a variety of migrating birds and insects from our back deck in New Holland, Pennsylvania.  Our deck is not a good place to look for fall migrants, but it is as good as any other spot in a lowland suburb.  Migrants could be anywhere, and they are exciting to see, wherever they may be.        I don't watch every day and I only look for migrants a couple of hours in the afternoons when I am on the deck.  But I've seen some interesting birds and insects during the limited times I'm "on duty".       I have seen a few each of bald eagles and ospreys migrating over our deck to the southwest, and a variety of hawks as well.  I have seen a few sharp-shinned hawks rocketing over, and a few merlins, all of which zipped by individually.  One of the merlins perched on top of our spruce tree, before continuing on.  During a couple of Septembers, I saw little groups of broad-winged hawks

     Several years ago, we planted a pyracantha, or firethorn, bush and a beautyberry bush on our back lawn in New Holland, Pennsylvania.  But those shrubs never did as well as they could have because they were shaded by two large Norway spruce trees in a neighbor's yard.        However, in the summer of 2023, those two spruce trees were cut down and removed, allowing more sunlight to reach the ground, and those two shrubs.  During the spring and summer of 2024, that firethorn and the beautyberry grew larger, produced many more flowers, to the delight of certain tiny insects, and, of course, produced many more berries than ever before.  And by mid-September, the firethorn had multitudes of striking, bright-orange berries and the beautyberry had many more delightfully-lovely, light-purple ones.  All those berries in one spot were a joy to experience.       Nature everywhere is always dynamic, always changing, to the detriment of some life, but to the benefit of other life.  The remo

     In mid-October of this year, I visited an abandoned, overgrown meadow in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania farmland to enjoy the wild plants and animals flourishing there.  I had been in that same bottomland pasture early in September when several patches of five-foot tall ironweed plants sported thousands of hot-pink blooms and four-foot high Canada goldenrods had innumerable tiny, yellow blossoms.  Both those species of plants were nestled in patches of tall reed-canary grass.  And many bees, beautiful butterflies, digger wasps and other kinds of interesting insects visited ironweed and goldeneye flowers to sip nectar, pollinating those blooms in the process.        But in mid-October, only clumps of asters with small, white blossoms and patches of another kind of aster with lovely, pale-lavender flowers were blooming in abundance in that overgrown meadow.  Again, several species of insects, including pearl crescent butterflies and yellow cloudless sulphur butterflies visited those

      Four kinds of mostly-brown, small birds, including permanent resident song sparrows and killdeer plovers, and wintering Wilson's snipe and American pipits, winter regularly, but sparingly, along streams and brooks in southeastern Pennsylvania farmland meadows.  But, being beautifully camouflaged on mud flats, gravel bars and shallows on the shores of those small waterways, these adaptable, interesting birds are nearly impossible to see, until they move or fly, and then they are quick to duck out of sight on brown flats and gravel bars, and among tufts of vegetation along shorelines.       In winter, all these birds ingest invertebrates from waterway shorelines where the running water doesn't freeze and thaws the flats and bars it laps over.  Each bird species snares invertebrates in its own way.  (Song sparrows also consume weed and grass seeds.)  The sparrows, killdeer and pipits pick up invertebrates from the surfaces of the mud, gravel and inch-deep water.  But killdee

     Occasionally I visit an overgrown storm water drainage ditch near home in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania to see what wild plants and creatures inhabit it.  A row of young red juniper trees were planted between that ditch and a blacktop parking lot.  Those junipers shelter birds such as northern mockingbirds, American robins and the like.  And the junipers' pretty, pale-blue, berry-like cones are eaten by mockers, robins, starlings, cedar waxwings and other kinds of berry-eating birds in fall and winter.  A mockingbird is usually among those junipers the year around.          That ditch is about thirty yards long and ten yards wide.  It is one of many hundreds of little, abandoned back areas in this area that become tiny wildlife habitats, and examples of nature healing itself after human activities destroyed the original habitats and then deserted them.  Several kinds of plants pioneered this ditch and made into a bit of a wildlife refuge, as well as those plants holding down

     In the middle of October, 2024, while waiting in our car while my wife was in the doctor's office, I noticed several yellow cloudless sulphur butterflies flying low over a recently mowed lawn on the border of a suburban area and farmland in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  Driving closer to that lawn, I saw those yellow butterflies were sipping nectar from tiny, golden wood sorrel flowers that were so short they were not mowed off.  I noticed, too, there were a few each of cabbage white butterflies, meadow fritillary butterflies and skipper butterflies of at least two kinds also getting nectar from wood sorrel blossoms.  I was impressed how those butterflies all made use of the only blooms left on that short-grass lawn, a human-made habitat.       While watching the butterflies for a few minutes, I saw a couple flocks of about twenty wild pigeons each flying strongly and gracefully across the sky, and round and round over nearby fields.  Eventually, those handsome pigeons land