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FALL MUDFLAT GATHERINGS

      Every year, after the spring migration and raising young in summer, by August through September, flocks of several kinds of water-loving, post-breeding birds rest and feed on the mudflats and in shallows of Lake Onalaska, a backwater off the Mississippi River in Wisconsin.  Those flats and shallows often are nearly covered with busy water birds that I am excited to see through a live camera and our computer screen as they go about their business of recovering from rearing offspring, and preparing for winter.      Flocks of stately American white pelicans, double-crested cormorants, ring-billed gulls and caspian terns rest on the flats and catch fish in the shallows, each species in its unique way, which is intriguing to see.  Groups of pelicans work together on the water's surface to herd small fish against a flat where the pelicans all repeatedly dip their large, pouched beaks into the water to scoop up fish.  Individual cormorants div...
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AUTUMN'S ROADSIDE FLOWERS

      Five kinds of common, flowering plants, including Canada goldenrod, white asters, Jerusalem artichokes, morning glories and smartweeds bloom beautifully along certain rural roadsides in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania farmland during September into October.  And their lovely blossoms are as attractive as any blooms in flower gardens, and free to see.        Perennial, native goldenrods usually are the first to bloom abundantly along many country roads in early September.  Each goldenrod stalk bears a clump of yellow "fingers" pointing in all directions, and each "digit" is covered with tiny, golden florets.  Larger patches and strips of goldenrod are particularly striking and lovely along country roads, and in abandoned fields.       Patches of perennial, native white asters, with white flower petals and yellow flower centers, bloom attractively from mid-September into October, often with goldenrod, along ma...
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RATTLESNAKE ROOKERY

      Somewhere in the forests of Pennsylvania, a live camera is focused on a secluded and protected timber rattlesnake rookery nestled in a cascade of sun-drenched outcroppings of lichen-covered boulders, fallen logs and carpets of dead, fallen leaves; shelter and sun for snakes in one place.  That live camera is sponsored by "Pennsylvania Rattlecam Livestream".        For a little bit every day since the end of August of this year, through that camera and our home computer screen, I was thrilled to watch, with great interest, up to seven timber rattlesnakes at once sunning themselves in the sunlight on sun-heated boulders.  Those cold-blooded rattlesnakes were all females lying in the heat of the sun to promote their embryos' growth inside themselves.  Rattlesnakes don't lay eggs, but give live birth.                  While pregnant  for a whole summer, female rattlesnakes don...
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EIGHT-EYED BUTTERFLIES

      The beautiful buckeye butterflies have "eight" eyes, two on top of each of four wings.  All of them are fake, but serve to scare away would-be predators.  Those fraudulent eyes identify buckeyes, and are not all the same size, for added interest in their color patterns.        Six eyes of the eight have purple"pupils", which is how buckeye butterflies got their common name.  Each of those eyes has yellow around it, and a thin, black line around the yellow, for added beauty.  Those intriguing eyes are an accident of genetics that benefitted ancestral buckeyes.  The many succeeding generations of buckeyes carried the genes that cause those eyes on their wings to the present generation, to the benefit of all those generations.      The handsome buckeyes have other attractive markings on top of their wings that aid in camouflaging, and identifying, them.  All four, pretty upper wing surfaces are a ple...
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AUTUMN'S RURAL ROADSIDE BEAUTIES

      I know of no human-made habitat more simple, and so closely visible, than vegetated roadside shoulders in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania farmland during September into October.  Many miles long, but only a few feet deep between blacktop and fields, many of those rural roadsides are mowed at least once each summer.  Communities of adaptable, wild plants and animals thrive along roadside shoulders, whether they were mowed or not.  But unmowed roadsides are better habitats for wildlife, because of a greater abundance of food and shelter.      Foxtail, purple-top, wire-grass, and other kinds of grasses dominate many country roadsides.  Foxtail grass seed heads do appear bushy, like a fox's tail.  The seed heads of purple top grass has an attractive, purply or reddish glow, especially when the sun shines on them.      Differential and red-legged grasshoppers, and field crickets live along many rural roads and eat the...
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SPICEBUSH BEAUTIES

      In the middle of April in southeastern Pennsylvania, and across much of the eastern United States, a yellow haze brightens the understories of many bottomland, deciduous woods.  That lovely, golden mist is created by innumerable flowers on native northern spicebushes that stand up to about eight feet tall and dominate many shady, deciduous forest understories on moist soil.         Some spicebushes are female and the others are male.  After being pollinated by bees, flies and other kinds of small, early insects that sip nectar from those golden flowers, and add more interest to the blossoms, each female bloom grows a green berry that swells through summer and becomes red by September.  Multitudes of those attractive berries are strikingly beautiful among spicebushes' green foliage that turns yellow in autumn.        During September, flocks of American robins, starlings, cedar waxwings and migrant thru...
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MOLE CRICKETS

      Of all the kinds of crickets I have seen, or heard, northern mole crickets are the most unusual.  And those crickets are so-named because they live much like moles in the same underground habitat both types of creatures are well adapted to.      Real moles and mole crickets demonstrate how genes and habitats shape body forms into a specific habitat.  Genes dictate the body form, but the habitat dictates what body forms will continue to thrive in a particular habitat to the age of reproduction.  Though unrelated, moles and mole crickets are both adapted to living in underground burrows, another case of convergence.      Like moles, mole crickets have small eyes to keep soil out of them.  They can't see in the dark anyway.  Mole crickets have shovel-like front feet, with "claws", to dig tunnels in soil, especially moist soil.  And like moles, mole crickets have fine "hairs" that sheds soil off them.  Als...
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