natureswondersbyclyde

      Several kinds of wild plants are most evident and beautiful in some pumpkin fields, cabbage fields and soybean fields, along rural roadsides, fence rows, streams and railroad tracks, and in abandoned fields in October in southeastern Pennsylvania.  Pumpkins, cabbage and soybeans grow too densely to be cultivated, hence the wild vegetation is allowed to grow to tall maturity.  And the other human-made habitats are mowed infrequently.  Therefore those lovely wild plants can grow to produce seeds.      Redroot and lamb's quarters weeds and foxtail grass are the most common of tall, wild plants in most cropland habitats in this area.  All originally from Europe, red roots and lamb's quarters have red leaves and stems in October, while foxtail grass turns yellow, all making the autumn fields more attractive.  These plants, like all green plants, turn colors in fall when the green chlorophyll dies in their tissues.             Other kinds of common, tall plants in cropland habi

      By the beginning of August, flocks of still-summering, and migrating, water-loving birds congregate in mixed flocks on the many broad mud flats, and shallow channels between those flats, on Lake Onalaska, a large backwater off the Mississippi River in Wisconsin.  At times, some flats and shallows are covered with at least six to eight kinds of birds at once, an exciting, beautiful sight to see.  And I see the birds of the Mississippi Flyway by gaining access to their live camera on my computer screen.          Some of the larger, higher flats are covered with tall, lush vegetation from wild rice to deciduous trees, which offer food and cover to wildlife.  And the hills bordering the Mississippi and Lake Onalaska are covered with deciduous woods, providing a natural background to this watery wildlife sanctuary.        Autumn birds on Lake Onalaska's flats and shallows could be divided into three groups- fish-eaters, invertebrate consumers and vegetarians.  Fish-eaters include

     The adaptable, intelligent and entertaining gray squirrels live abundantly in forests, wood lots, parks and suburbs with maturing trees, and trees in hedgerows between fields in southeastern Pennsylvania.  Each female squirrel bears two litters of young in protective tree hollows each year, with about four babies in each litter, one of the reasons gray squirrels are so omnipresent.   And because they are so numerous, many of them are preyed on by several kinds of predatory birds and mammals in the squirrels' range in the eastern part of the United States.  By eliminating some of the squirrel population, surviving squirrels have more food and shelter opportunities.            I have seen a couple of gray squirrels being attacked by predatory birds over the years.  One summer day I was driving through a suburban area with lots of tall trees.  I saw a squirrel running over a lawn parallel to my car and in the same direction of that vehicle.  Suddenly a red-tailed hawk dropped ont

      I planted our pussy willow shrub on our back lawn several years ago with the hopes of enjoying its furry, upright catkins early each March.  And we have every year as that multi-branched bush grew up to 30 feet, and more.  And I have also enjoyed a variety of insects on it every summer and fall, including in 2020.      During June of this year, I saw little clusters of quarter-inch, gray, dark-spotted willow aphids sucking sap from smooth, tender bark on twigs and limbs.  Because of their coloring and sedentary ways, they were difficult to spot at first.        Meanwhile, scattered colonies of tiny, yellow aphids were on that shrub where they, too, were ingesting sap from the pussy willow.  These small aphids were attended by a kind of little, red and black, lady bug beetles and their knobby, red and black larvae.  Those attractive lady bugs, young and old alike, kill and suck out the juices of the tiny aphids as they sipped sap from thin bark.      Each dusk, by late June and in

     My favorite spiders are black and yellow garden spiders, wolf spiders and six-spotted fishing spiders.  And like all spider species, they have eight legs, are arachnids, related to scorpions and horseshoe crabs, and suck bodily fluids from a variety of invertebrates.        My favorites are large, attractive, and common species across much of the United States, including in southeastern Pennsylvania where I live.  I 've seen all these harmless, fascinating spiders, close to home, several times in my lifetime.  And I enjoyed every one of them.          The beautiful female garden spiders have one inch long bodies, six eyes, short, silver hair on their thoraxes and black and yellow patterns on their abdomens.  Each one daily creates a new orb web of silk that is about two feet, or more, across and hangs vertically between tall vegetation, and in fences, in farmland.  A thick, white, zig-zag band of webbing stretches vertically in the middle of each web.        Each dignified fem

      Three kinds of wild aster blooms are the prettiest wild flowers during September and October in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania farmland.  Asters are closely related to one another and difficult to identify.  But we humans still enjoy their beauties every year, from mid-September to the end of October.         Patches of asters that have striking, deep-purple flower petals around yellow centers are the first wild ones I see, in abundance, starting in the middle of September.  And I see them mostly in some recently abandoned fields, along with stands of high grasses, and tall goldenrod plants with innumerable yellow blossoms at the end of each stem.  Purple and gold together in abundance in those fields, where crickets chirp and grasshoppers leap, is a lovely combination of colors that reminds me of royalty.      By the beginning of October in Lancaster County, asters with many tiny, white blooms cover some weedy fields so completely that those fields look, from a distance, like sn

      Fish drives the economy of wildlife on the Brook's River in Katmai National Park in Alaska through September.  Schools of apparently post-spawning sockeye salmon, and small fish, are the main prey of daily gatherings of brown bears, glaucous-winged gulls, Bonaparte's gulls and common merganser ducks that I see by live camera and our home computer screen.  Readers can bring up those live cameras by typing in Mississippi River Flyway Cam- Explore. Org.- River Watch Bear Cam.        Brook's River flows through lovely scenery of forests and forested mountains in the southwestern corner of Alaska, at the base of the Aleution Island chain.  Nearby tall coniferous trees stand out in deciduous forests that closely skirt the river.  This whole, nearly-pristine environment is mostly the way Native Americans saw it before the coming of Europeans.      The bears, glaucous-wings and mergansers have been along that wild stretch of river since at least June.  The bears caught many s

      Being an agricultural county, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania has many cow pastures in moist bottomlands, many of them along streams.  Some of those meadows are heavily grazed and only have short grass.  But other pastures are seldom grazed and harbor several kinds of beautifully flowering plants by late summer.  All these flowering plants flourish best in damp soil and full sunlight, both of which pastures have in full.        Those wild, meadow plants bloom beautifully from August, through September and into October, but not all at once.  Each species has its time to blossom, bringing changing beauty to overgrown meadows for a couple of months each year.        Many of these moist, bottomland pastures have some of the prettiest blooms in natural flower gardens a person will ever see.  And no two meadows are alike, each one having its own combination of pretty blossoms.  One pasture has lots of ironweed and loosestrife.  Another one has much ironweed and Joe-pye weed.  Other mead

      There's been many warm, October afternoons here in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania when I've seen several each of differential grasshoppers and woolly bear caterpillars on some of the farmland roads I drive on.  And, no matter how many of each I see each autumn over the years, they're presence on country roads is still interesting to me, mainly because they are signs of fall's arrival in local cropland.  I swerve where I can to avoid running over leaping grasshoppers and rippling caterpillars I see on rural roads.        Both these kinds of insects consume plants, including grass, along farmland roadsides.  And both adapted to living along those roadsides where sheltering vegetation may be mowed occasionally, but not plowed, allowing insects time to develop to maturity.         Differential grasshoppers are the largest kind of at least a few species of grasshoppers along rural roadsides.  Other kinds of common, roadside grasshoppers include red-legged, spur-throate