natureswondersbyclyde

      Anyone sitting on a beach or a house deck by a beach along the Atlantic Ocean coastline from Georgia to New Jersey in April is likely to see flocks of laughing gulls, brown pelicans and double-crested cormorants winging over those beaches and ocean breakers sliding up the beaches.  Those people might also spot pods of bottle-nosed dolphins surfacing briefly for air just beyond the breakers, little groups of sanderlings, which are a kind of sandpiper, running up and down before wavelets on the beaches.  And those persons might notice an osprey or a few common terns fishing over the ocean.  All those seacoast creatures add more beauty and intrigue to the Atlantic shoreline in spring.      Attractive and graceful in the air, laughing gulls are the icons of the Atlantic coast in summer.  They are the omnipresent, black-headed gulls that almost constantly call loudly, like people laughing.       Laughing gulls nest on the ground in salt marshes and scavenge any food everywhere along s

     Louisiana waterthrushes and American dippers are unrelated birds that have characteristics in common because they adapted to similar habitats.  Each species of life is molded by its habitat so that that life can use its habitat efficiently for survival and reproduction.        Waterthrushes and dippers nest along running streams and search for invertebrates in those currents, the waterthrushes in eastern North American woods and the dippers along swift mountain streams from Alaska to Panama.  The habitats of these birds obviously don't overlap, but the birds occupy the same niche in those habitats.  And both species bob up and down while walking along streams, probably to mimic small debris bouncing in the current, which is a form of camouflage, or blending in, to be invisible.        Louisiana waterthrushes are a kind of North American warbler that patrols the stony edges of woodland streams for aquatic invertebrates to eat.  They pump their tails up and down as they walk alo

     One mid-April afternoon this year, I drove by a Lancaster County, Pennsylvania stream, flanked on both sides by black walnut and ash-leafed maple trees of varying sizes.  A large maple fell into that waterway and blocked limbs floating downstream, creating a mid-stream brush-pile.      I stopped to check that heap of branches for birds that could be sheltering in it.  Sure enough, I noticed a pair of song sparrows in that stack of stuck boughs and twigs.  They were hopping about in search of invertebrates among the fallen branches.  They were a bit hard to see, even with binoculars, because those gray-brown and black-streaked birds are so well camouflaged among thickets.        Song sparrows are permanent residents wherever they live.  And many pairs live along streams and brooks that run through sheltering thickets of trees, bushes and vines.  The pair I saw in the brush-pile might even raise young in its protection, and gather invertebrates along the waterway to feed their babie

     Rock pigeons and mourning doves are related birds that are abundant in southeastern Pennsylvania, and the whole United States, because they are adapted to human-made habitats.  Pairs and groups of both these handsome, adaptable species feed on grain and seeds in harvested fields.  But pigeons shelter and nest in barns, under larger bridges and on city buildings, while doves do the same on boughs of thickly-needled, sheltering coniferous trees planted on suburban and city lawns.        Though the gray pigeons originally hale from rock cliffs along the Mediterranean Sea and brown mourning doves are native to North America, these species have several traits in common.  Both are attractive in plain ways, permanent residents wherever they live, mate for life and lay two white eggs per clutch.  They feed their young a porridge of throat phlegm and half-digested grain they pump into the youngsters' mouths.  Unfortunately, they build poor nests and lose some broods in strong winds.