natureswondersbyclyde

      New Jersey's barrier islands along the Atlantic Ocean coastline have long been developed into homes and other buildings, except for Island Beach State Park, which is still mostly natural.  By a live camera and our home computer screen, I had daily been watching a small section of the shoreline of Long Beach Island, one of Jersey's developed barrier islands, during November of 2020.        Long Beach Island, which is developed from end to end, has only remnant natural areas on the side overlooking Barnegat Bay, which is salt water between that long, lean island and the Jersey mainland.  But a limited number of wildlife species, including a few kinds of waterfowl and gulls, live on those bayside natural areas, whose shores are lapped by Barnegat Bay.      Every day this November, when I watched our computer screen, I saw brant, in groups of 8 to 180, either swimming or flying across Barnegat Bay to that particular litt...

      I like where southeastern Pennsylvania's woods, thickets and maturing suburbs mix.  I also like a mix of colorful, deciduous leaves and conifers' green needles at the end of October and into mid-November.                  By that time, most deciduous trees and shrubs are bare.  As curtains of dead, colored foliage fall away in suburban areas, the green beauties of planted conifers become ever more visible.  And the few red, brown and yellow leaves still remaining on some trees and bushes offer a lovely contrast to the green coniferous trees.  Those remnant autumn leaves still on their woody twigs and evergreen needles compliment each other's beauties into the middle of November.  And dead, but lovely, fallen  leaves are scattered over the ground of the still-green lawns, making that human-made niche more beautiful.  And woods and thickets become wilder looking as autumn slips into w...

     Several woody-stemmed plants, including native red maple trees, and alien Norway maple, Japanese red maple, weeping cherry and Bradford pear trees, and alien barberry bushes and burning bushes are commonly planted on lawns in southeastern Pennsylvania, as elsewhere.  These deciduous trees and shrubs on lawns have striking, colored leaves in mid-November, which is later than on wild trees and shrubbery, prolonging the autumn beauties of those lawns, including ours at home.           Red maples are covered with red leaves in the middle of November.  That brilliant foliage lights up the area where those trees stand, and helps lift spirits on gray days.         Norway maples have yellow foliage that also brighten lawns.  And these yard trees can become large, and riddled with cavities that gray squirrels, raccoons, chickadees, barred and screech owls, and other creatures live and raise young in. ...

      One afternoon in late October of 2020, I saw a small group of golden plovers sweep in rapid flight low over a recently harvested potato field that was mostly bare ground, and also inhabited by resident horned larks.  The plovers were exciting to see because they had come from the Arctic tundra where they nest, and were migrating to bare soil and shorelines in South America to escape the northern winter.  They stopped on bare ground here, and elsewhere, to fill up on invertebrates to have fuel for the next part of their journey.        I don't see flocks of horned larks or golden plovers in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania's bare ground fields until those birds fly swiftly in little flocks over those fields, or across rural roads in front of my vehicle.  And I seldom see golden plover flocks here at all, though I have seen several groups locally over many years, simply by luck.  But I was in the right place at the right time...