natureswondersbyclyde

      Song sparrows are bold in plumage and song, making them noticeable, though they are well camouflaged and live among overgrown thickets of shrubbery and vines.  Their feathering is light, brownish-gray, with heavy, black streaking all over.  And their piping songs are heard as early as warm afternoons in February.  Those lovely, lilting songs, alone, give away their presence among thickets.        The attractive song sparrows are permanent residents wherever they live.  They don't migrate.        And song sparrows are adaptable, living in thickets on older, human-made lawns, and along woods, hedgerows, railways, and waterways and impoundments.  They are, therefore, common across much of North America; as a variety of subspecies adapted to various habitats.  They are the most widespread species of sparrow on this continent.  And if other kinds of sparrows were to become extinct, song sparrows would fill each one's niche, from salt marshes to woodland edges.         But I th

     I've been watching a narrow, half-mile strip of phragmites, tall grass and red juniper trees on a shoreline on developed Long Beach Island, along Barnegat Bay in New Jersey from mid-December, 2021 to the middle of January, 2022 through a live camera and our home computer screen.  While watching, I discovered that remnant strip of vegetation represents much of New Jersey's developed coastline.  And I noticed a variety of adaptable birds come to a little, freshwater stream in this bit of bay shoreline to drink fresh water.  That little oasis is an interesting place to see, including in winter, what birds daily come to the fresh water amid shoreline development.  Those birds use every niche from the bay to the red junipers.      The New Jersey shoreline is a series of narrow, sandy islands that form between the Atlantic Ocean and the salt marshes and channels between those islands and the mainland.  Those long, lean islands protect the salt marshes from ocean waves.        Th

     Several kinds of adaptable and common birds are obvious wintering in southeastern Pennsylvania's farmland and suburban areas.  These interesting bird species are readily noticed in those human-made habitats because they move about in flocks in search of food.  And these birds provide beauty, intrigue and inspiration, which helps make life more enjoyable to those people who appreciate them.      Flocks of majestic Canada geese, elegant tundra swans and handsome mallard ducks rest on lakes and the slow currents of creeks, and feed on the green shoots of rye in fields and kernels of corn on harvested corn fields.  At sunset, those kinds of waterfowl take flight, group after group, from their watery roosts, to fly out to feed in fields under the cover of darkness.  Their flocks in swift flight are strikingly, beautifully silhouetted black against a red sunset.  The geese honk loudly, the swans whoop pleasantly, and one can hear the rapid beating of the ducks' wings.  Soon, all