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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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BEAUTIES OF SNOW

      Snow is a nuisance, and dangerous.  But it also has several beauties, day and night, that we have the God-given ability to appreciate.        Snow falling gently, without any sound, is a unique beauty in itself.  And with the help of outdoor lights, falling snow illuminates the night.        Day or night, visibility shrinks dramatically during a snowfall, sounds are muffled and the whole landscape becomes charming in an unending, white blanket of fresh snow.  And falling snow traces every deciduous limb and twig, and needled bough in woods, fields and lawns.       In sunlight, after a snowfall, we see pristine snow covers everything, and enhances the grays and browns of deciduous tree and shrub bark, the green needles of conifers and the beige of tall, dead weeds and grasses.  Sunny, blue skies and snow-buried landscapes are beautiful in a new, but temporary way.    ...
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DANCING GUPPIES

      When I was about ten years old, I enjoyed six guppy fish [ two females and four males] in a one-gallon,  glass jar that I put on an end table, under a table lamp.  I put a clump of algae strands in the jar with the guppies to make their temporary home more natural.  I often sat and watched those beautiful, lively guppies, especially at night when the lamp put abundant light into the water-filled jar.        They were not in that jar long, however.  I put them in a five-gallon aquarium with the algae strands and placed the whole business on that same end table under the table lamp.  There, of course, the guppies had more room, and probably were happier.          Those small fish were always swimming about, and attractive.  But the most interesting aspects of their activities were, and still are, the males' courtship dances and the females' giving live birth.      The o...
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SPAWNING HERRING

      Herrings' annual spawning is one of the most spectacular happenings in nature.  Great hordes of those foot-long fish of coastal ocean waters across much of the world annually gather in estuaries, fjords and other back-waters off the oceans in unbelievable spawning spectacles.  Each female herring spawns about 20,000 eggs on kelp, eelgrass and other aquatic vegetation, and other shoreline objects.  The tremendous masses of tiny, sticky eggs adhere to those objects in layers, while vast clouds of milky-white, herring sperm, that cover many acres of shallow-water shorelines, fertilize those eggs.       Not all those billions of herring eggs hatch, however.  A variety each of crabs, fish, gulls, sandpipers, plovers and other kinds of marine life, plus black bears and other shoreline creatures, eat many eggs.  Still millions upon millions of herring fry do hatch and form vast schools of themselves along ocean shorelines. ...
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HARVESTING WATER FROM FOG

      Fog blowing off the southern Atlantic Ocean is the most predictable, reliable source of daily fresh water in the Namib Desert along the west coast of southwestern Africa, if you can harvest that fog.        Certain kinds of darkling beetles in the Namib harvest water from fog, which allows them to survive in one of the driest environments on Earth.  Each morning, those beetles clamber up the sand dunes to their crests and stand still in "head-stand" positions on them, a behavior called "fog-basking".  The wind-driven fog rolls over the beetles, some of it getting trapped as droplets on the tips of bumps on the beetles' wing covers.  The droplets dribble down to a waxy surface between the bumps on the wing covers, making them soaking wet, and slide down the beetle's head-down posture to its mouth so each beetle can drink that life-giving, fresh water.  Though the head-stands, and bumps and wax on the wing covers are small ...
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FEEDING DEER AND OTHER WILDLIFE

      Several trough feeders, daily loaded with oats, acorns and apples, provide food for over 60 white-tailed deer, a couple dozen wild turkeys and about a score of mourning doves every day in the mixed deciduous/coniferous woods outside Brownsville in central Maine.  All these critters, plus sprinklings of blue jays and starlings, a pair of hairy woodpeckers, and a few each of gray squirrels and red squirrels are seen close-up by live cameras and computer screens, including mine.        Feeding wildlife is not natural, but the creatures still live outdoors and are free to follow their own instincts.  They are still part of the ecosystem around them, and entertaining as they gather food and socialize with other members of each creature's kind.  And they are enjoyed by many people who see them on-line, and are inspired by them.      It's exciting, and inspiring to see groups of deer, turkeys and doves coming to the fe...
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BIRDS WINTERING ALONG PASTURE STREAMS

      With a casual glance, short-grass pastures in winter in Lancaster County, as elsewhere, seem barren of bird life, except for an occasional small flock of mallard ducks, here and there, on them.  But with closer looks with binoculars, I can spot one, or a few each of killdeer plovers, Wilson's snipe, song sparrows and water pipits. all of which are camouflaged along certain running brooks of clear, shallow water.  There those birds spend winter days searching for invertebrates in, or along, the edges of those little waterways in meadows, which are human-made habitats.           Most short-grass pastures, used for grazing livestock, have little shelter in the form of shrubbery.  But all these birds, except the song sparrows, are adapted to open habitats with minimal cover to avoid cold winds and predators.  And song sparrows are adaptable, making do with whatever shelter is available.        Al...
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