natureswondersbyclyde

     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

     Many cow pastures of green grass in southeastern Pennsylvania farmland have a brook or stream flowing sparkling-clear through them.  Those pretty, little waterways provide fresh water for grazing livestock.  Currents of some of those brooks and streams gouge out mud and stones, here and there, from waterway bottoms, creating small, deeper "holes" in them.  The current is slower in those little holes, providing places where wildlife settles without having to battle stronger currents as they would in shallow water.  Green alga grows on some of the rocks in those holes and tall grass and other plants, including forget-me-nots, arrowheads, smartweeds, evening primrose, bur-marigolds, sneezeweeds and bittersweet nightshade, flourish on the edges of many holes.        Several kinds of aquatic creatures live in those small "holes" in meadow waterways.  But each hole harbors a unique community of critters; no two hole communities are alike.        Little schools of str

     Every year, September is the time of the elk rut in the wooded hills and cultivated fields of northcentral Pennsylvania.  The loud, raucous squealing of stately bull elks echoes through the hills each late afternoon into the night, which is exciting to hear.      I am thrilled to see and hear those majestic bulls through a live camera, mounted by the Pennsylvania Game Commission in a state game lands field, and our computer screen.  And I am happy to experience other kinds of mammals, and a variety of birds, by the same camera.  This field reflects some of the wildlife living in northcentral Pennsylvania, and following are some of the interesting wildlife highlights.      Both genders and all ages of elk mingle in that field during the elk breeding season.  Up to 18 elk, including two or three large bulls with magnificent antlers, cows, and calves of the year, might be in that field at once from dusk into the night.  They all nibble grass and other plants, and the big bulls sniff