natureswondersbyclyde

      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...

      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...

      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...

      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...

      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...

      To me, the adaptable, common five-lined skinks are the most beautiful lizards in the rocky-bottom woods of the eastern United States, including here in southeastern Pennsylvania.  I mostly see juvenile, blue-tailed skinks in crevices on cliffs and among rocks in locks of an abandoned canal along the Susquehanna River bordering Lancaster and York Counties.  But I see them only for a second because they are quick to scamper away and hide.               Juvenile skinks are particularly striking with their distinctive brown and yellow stripes that run lengthwise on top of them from nose to tail, and camouflages them.  And they have long, bright-blue tails that might attract the attentions of predators, who may attack those tails, breaking them off, while the young skinks get away to grow a new, but stunted, tail.       Five-lined skinks are diurnal, basking in the sunlight to warm up enough to hu...