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SHEDAO PIT VIPERS

      An estimated number of 20,000 venomous Shedao pit vipers, living on the 180-acre Shedao Island, eight miles off the coast of China, have an unusual way of securing prey animals.  Younger, smaller snakes lie still on tree limbs and wait for small, migrant birds to come close.  When birds come close to these vipers, they quickly grab the birds with their mouths and inject poison into the victims with their fangs.  Older, larger vipers lie in wait on the ground for feathery victims that were killed, but too large to be ingested by smaller snakes, and, therefore, dropped to the ground.  That separation of feeding places reduces competition among the snakes for food.       Those migrating thousands of birds, the only prey animals on Shedao Island for pit vipers, are going north to Siberia during a couple of weeks in May to nest, and heading south for the winter in September.  Those birds stop on Shedao Island to rest, and feed...
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MARVELOUS MAPLES

      Red maple trees and sugar maples trees have many marvels, including in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  In fall in Lancaster County, they issue the most abundant, strikingly beautiful and obvious displays of colored leaves in this county.  These maples grow wild in this county; red maples in moist soil bottomlands, and sugar maples in a bit more upland habitats.  Both species are commonly planted on lawns because of their beauties through each year.  And red maples have red fall foliage, while the leaves of sugar maples turn red-orange in autumn, making woods and lawns the more attractive in fall.        As daylight hours become shorter each succeeding day in autumn, and average temperatures become lower, deciduous trees, including maples, shut off water to their leaves, allowing them to die.  And as they die, their green chlorophyll fades away, which reveals the other, breathtaking, colors of leaves, including reds,...
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TRIPOD FISH

      Up to 16,000 feet down, on the totally dark bottoms of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans, lives strange-looking, foot-long, adult fish called tripod fish.  As young fish, tripod fish swim in the open oceans in search of shrimp, krill, small crustaceans and tiny fish.  These youngsters have huge fins that make them look larger than they are to discourage would-be predators.      But as those immature tripod fish mature, their two pelvic fins and the lower part of their tails become up to three feet long.  Meanwhile, they slowly sink to the desert-like ocean floors where they live out the rest of their solitary lives using those elongated, rigid fins, like stilts, to stand still a couple of feet above ocean floors and wait for sustenance to drift by in the slight currents.        Each tripod fish pushes its long fins into the ocean floors to help anchor themselves while they wait for food.  Tripod fishe...
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AMAZING TOMATOES

      As I sit here eating tomato slices from tomatoes our good neighbors gave us from their garden, I reflect on the beauties, nutrition and history of tomatoes.  I saw the many yellow flowers on the tomato plants that produced the deep-orange fruits I am eating.  I saw the little, green knobs that grew from the fertilized blooms grow bigger and bigger, turning yellow, then a beautiful orange as they grew.        I saw the tomato plants basking in sunlight and showering in rainfall.  Chlorophyll in the green leaves of tomato plants traps sunlight and puts it to work to combine hydrogen from rainwater drawn from the ground by the plants' roots and stems, and carbon dioxide from the air to form sugar that feeds the growth of the plants and ripening tomatoes.  Animals and people use oxygen green plants expel as a waste product, and animals and people exhale carbon dioxide, which green plants take in to help produce sugar for thei...
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MID-AUTUMN ROADSIDE COLORS

      One hour a week, from mid-September to almost mid-October, 2026, I patrolled a half-mile stretch of rural roadside in a deciduous, bottomland woods in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania to enjoy nature.  The vegetation on both sides of the road is mowed at least once a year, about ten feet back from the road to the woodland edges, making the beautiful, vivid colors of autumn leaves, berries and late-blooming flowers along those wooded borders quite visible from the road.       Colored foliage dominates deciduous woods during the latter part of October, locally.  But some bottomland trees' foliage turns colors before that time, including many strikingly-red leaves on red maples and black gums, and soft yellow on black walnuts.  I see those lovely leaves peeking out beautifully along that half-mile section of woodland edges I visit weekly from the country road.           The strikingly-red berries of spicebu...
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DIVERGED SWALLOWS

      When I was a boy living in farmland in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, I was familiar with barn swallows nesting in open-topped, mud-pellet cradles they built themselves on the sides of support beams in a barn.  And when I entered the barn, parent swallows would dive at me and call harshly to drive me away from their eggs or young in those nurseries.           Swallows have always fascinated me.  Their swift, swooping flight is entertaining. I have seen six different kinds in the eastern United States over the years, including barn swallows, cliff swallows, bank swallows, rough-winged swallows, purple martins and tree swallows.  And, having diverged from a common ancestor, all swallows, world-wide, have traits in common with each other, including those species in the eastern United States.  They are all built much alike, with streamlined bodies, long, narrow wings and small beaks, with large gapes for ensnaring flyin...
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DIVERGING BIRD FAMILIES

      The species of two families of North American breeding birds, five kinds of flycatchers, that are nearly identical, and four of spot-breasted thrushes, that look much alike, are examples of species diversion from a common ancestor.  Each species of each family still resembles its close relatives, even after an apparent, long time lapse.  Each kind of bird in both families diverged from its ancestor and adapted to a different habitat to take advantage of new food and shelter sources, different than that of their close relatives.  That diverging from a common ancestor reduces competition for food and cover among those cousins, and creates new species.        Willow, alder, least, Acadian and yellow-bellied flycatchers of the Empidonax genus demonstrate quite well their diversion from a common ancestor.  All five of these species are plain brown for the most part, and have eye rings and wing bars.  They all are plain to...
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