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WATERFOWL AT WILDLIFE REFUGES IN MARCH

     Daily, from March 4 to March 9, 2026, I had been watching a few kinds of migrant waterfowl species gathering on large impoundments in Blackwater Wildlife Refuge in Maryland and Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area in Pennsylvania, through live computers at each location, 24/7, and our home computer screen by switching the computer back and forth between those refuges.  The thousands each of majestic tundra swans, Canada geese and northern pintail ducks at both refuges, and thousands of handsome snow geese at Middle Creek were noticeably restless and constantly vocal, day and night.  And adding to the excitement of experiencing those stately birds was their flocks daily going and coming from nearby feeding fields of winter rye and corn kernels in harvested corn fields.  All those elegant, migrating birds obviously rested on those impoundments a short time before migrating farther north to their annual nesting territories.  But they were exciting a...
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DEAD LEAVES CLINGING

       While driving through a foggy, soggy, bottomland woods of deciduous trees one rainy afternoon in early March of 2026, I noticed several trees had dead leaves still clinging to their twigs.  I stopped to admire more closely the ginger-hued foliage on pin oak trees and white oak trees and pale-beige-colored leaves on American beech trees in that woodland.  Those dead, dried leaves still attached to their twig moorings added another bit of color to the gray woods, as they had all winter.  And I could see how many trees of each kind were living in that bottomland woods because of the dried foliage still clinging to them.      As I admired the dead foliage on hose trees I remembered that pin oaks, white oaks and beeches have much in common.  Obviously, they share wooded bottomland habitats with their moist soil.  They all bear nuts that are consumed by squirrels, deer, bears, jays, wild turkeys and other kinds of woodland wil...
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WATERFOWL IN FOG

      Beauty in nature is more than sunshine, flowers and bird songs.  Its also great gatherings of wintering ducks, geese and swans, preparing to migrate north, floating on large, human-made  impoundments, or sitting on their ice, on cloudy, foggy days in March.  A picture of gloom, perhaps, to some people, but another beauty to me in that wild dreariness.       Fog is dangerous to transportation, but it is also a part of nature.  It is unique in its beauty that does not happen every day.       On the afternoon of March 4, 2026, I was looking at the 400-acre lake at Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area in southeastern Pennsylvania by their live camera and our computer screen to see what species of waterfowl (ducks, geese and swans) were resting on it between feeding forays in nearby rye and harvested cornfields.  That impoundment was mostly covered with ice, but there was an ever-growing strip of open wate...
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ICE, SNOW GEESE AND STARS

     On February 18, 2026, about 100,000 elegant snow geese landed on the 400-acre impoundment at Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area in southeastern Pennsylvania to rest during their annual, early-spring migration north to their nesting territories on the Arctic tundra.  But because the stately, restless snow geese shift about every few days to find fresh feeding fields, "only" 60,000, (an estimate), snow geese rested on Middle Creek's lake, which stirred excitement among local birders again.  But that number should increase to over 100,000 snow geese by early March, which is about the peak of their numbers at Middle Creek, as it has every March for the last 40 years or more.       The flighty snow geese are on and off any impoundment, day and night.  They fly out to fields twice a day, usually.  Flying bald eagles put whole great flocks to speedy flight.  And, sometimes, the whole tremendous host of snows take flight from a lake...
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STATELY GEESE AND SWANS

      You think you hear it, then you did, the clear, ringing honking of a flock of airborne Canada geese in the distance.  But the geese come closer and closer, and their bugling is ever louder, stirring excitement in many people.  Then those majestic geese sweep into view, high in the sky, and pass over in V or line formation and continue on, their boisterous vocalizing fading with them.      Canada geese, cackling geese Atlantic brant, snow geese, Ross's geese, white-fronted geese and tundra swans are large, stately birds that are common in North America.  For years, I annually saw Canada geese, snow geese and tundra swans, in large numbers on impoundments and estuaries, here in southeastern Pennsylvania, and in neighboring Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey.  But today, I admire the elegance of these birds on our home computer screen, through live cameras at places where those waterfowl, and their relatives, winter, and gather early i...
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A SHELTERING STREAM

      During the extreme, prolonged cold spell of late January to mid-February, 2026, a stream of fresh water in a tiny, remnant salt marsh on Long Beach Barrier Island, between the Atlantic Ocean and Barnegat Bay, which borders the New Jersey mainland, became a sheltering haven for a few kinds of ducks and geese.  I have been watching that little stream and salt marsh, through the seasons for the last few years, via a live camera there and our home computer screen.  A variety of water-living birds come to that small waterway to drink fresh water, including in winter.  But I never saw so much waterfowl on that little waterway as during that period of extreme cold when Barnegat Bay froze shut.  Those lovely ducks and geese added beauty to that little stream.         The stream remained open in places because of the slow-moving current in it, and lots of attractive waterfowl milling about on it.  Sometimes that running, litt...
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IN PRAISE OF ROBINS

     On February tenth of 2026, I saw several American robins flying briskly around our neighborhood in New Holland, Pennsylvania in a way I didn't see them behave all winter.  It was as if they were celebrating spring on a day when the high temperature was in the high 30's, after a couple of weeks of extreme cold, day and night.  Next day, I saw up to 30 robins darting in and out of planted juniper bushes, bordering a parking lot, where they were eating the shrubs' pale-blue, berry-like cones in nearby Honeybrook.  All that robin activity in two days made me, again, remember and appreciate local robin activities during every season through each year.        Although many robins migrate to the southern United States for the winter, some stay north in the States, adding more life and beauty to it.  Most wintering robins in the north ingest a variety of berries from hedgerow shrubbery, and bushes planted on lawns in suburban area...
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