natureswondersbyclyde

      November and December are busy migrant bird months on Lake Onalaska, a backwater of the Mississippi River along the Mississippi Flyway in western Wisconsin.  Flocks of post-breeding ring-billed gulls, Canada geese, tundra swans, a variety of ducks, American coots, sandhill cranes, American white pelicans and bald eagles congregate on Onalaska during that time.  I saw all these bird species through a live camera and our home computer screen.        The numbers of ring-billed gulls and Canada geese increased greatly by late October at Onalaska.  Flocks of both attractive species daily settled on that back-water's mud flats and shallows to rest between feeding forays.  The graceful, gray and white gulls fed on small fish they caught and dead fish and other tidbits they scavenged from the shallows.  However, most ring-bills left Onalaska by late November and drifted south before wintry weather hit Wisconsin.       But the ever-honking flocks of hardy and majestic Canada geese con

      Small rodents seem defenseless against predators, but they are not.  They are camouflaged, ever alert and can run to hide.  And they make warm, snug nests to escape bad weather and predators, and deliver young, all in relative safety.        Some smaller, adaptable rodents, including wood chucks, eastern chipmunks, muskrats, field mice, deer mice and gray squirrels, living in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, for example, make cozy, sheltering homes with  materials at hand.  Each species creates a relatively comfortable, secure dwelling in its own way, which helps in identifying the presence of those various kinds of rodents.      Wood chucks and eastern chipmunks dig burrows into the ground, the former species in farmland mostly, and the latter in woods and older suburban areas.  Chucks make at least two exits to their homes so they don't become trapped in them by predators.  Chucks feed heavily on green plant material during summer and fall to gain fat to survive sleeping in

      At least nine kinds of sparrows that winter in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, including dark-eyed juncos and song, white-throated, white-crowned, fox, tree, savannah, field and swamp sparrows, have several traits in common.  All of them are hard to spot because they are small and camouflaged in their various habitats.  All are seed-eaters in winter and are preyed on by house cats, sharp-shinned hawks and Cooper's hawks.  All species are attractive in plain ways.  And all but three kinds winter in little flocks near food and shelter.        All these handsome sparrows, except tree and savannah sparrows, winter in weedy thickets of shrubbery and young trees in dense hedgerows and woodland edges, where they feed on seeds and escape from cold, winter winds and predators.        Striking, permanent resident song sparrows are adaptable, omnipresent and abundant as individuals in thickets along farmland hedgerows and streams, and in shrubbery in suburban areas.  This species has ad

      Winter solstices, around December 22 nd in the northern hemisphere, note the end of one biological year and the start of the next one; a biological New Years.  Winter solstices are the time of ancient rituals and praying by people in northern hemisphere to "coax" the sun back north, bringing spring and another growing season with it.  They are the time to celebrate that winter is already half gone, daylight won't get any shorter per day and the sun will soon start to come north, bringing warmer days and increased warmth that will stir plant and animal life into growth and reproduction.          Each winter solstice is the middle of biological winter in the northern hemisphere, and the time of the shortest amount of daylight per day.  Daylight each succeeding day gets ever shorter as time proceeds toward the solstice, and ever longer per day after the solstice.         By the middle of January, one can see that daylight in the evenings of the northern hemisphere is g

     Muskrats, meadow voles, which are a kind of mouse, and marsh rice rats are adaptable rodents that are native to parts of North America.  Muskrats live along farmland streams and in marshes throughout much of the continent. Meadow voles dwell in grassy areas and in farmland in the northern half of the United States, and most of Canada and Alaska.  Rice rats inhabit marshes and salt marshes in the southeastern part of the United States, north to Kansas and southern New Jersey.       All these interesting rodents inhabit grassy and reedy habitats, which gives them another thing in common.  And they are vegetarians mostly, eating greens, seeds and grains.  So it's no surprise that all three species share certain tidal marshes along the Atlantic Coast, and live at once, but independently of each other, in muskrat homes built by the muskrats themselves.      Muskrats have foot-long bodies and seven inch, flattened tails they use for swimming.  They excavate burrows in streambanks at