natureswondersbyclyde

      Lake Onalaska, a large backwater off the Mississippi River, was full of birds from September to mid-November of 2022.  I daily saw those birds via a live camera on the Mississippi Flyway in Wisconsin and our home computer screen.        Non-breeding American white pelicans, double-crested cormorants and ring-billed gulls dominated the shallows and mudflats of Onalaska during September.  All these birds are fish-eaters, but catch their prey in different ways.  Groups of pelicans float in a line in shallow water to herd fish into schools.  Then the pelicans, all together, lunge forward with beaks open and in the water to scoop up bunches of fish.  Cormorants dive under water from the surface to snare fish in their bills, one at a time.  And gulls catch fish from the surface of the water.  Gulls also scavenge dead fish.       Little groups of red-winged blackbirds swayed on the tops of wild...

      This November, I stopped along a stretch of Mill Creek in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania farmland to see what birds and mammals were stirring.  I occasionally visit that part of Mill Creek in winter because I sometimes see a small variety of water-loving birds on the creek, and surrounding meadows, rye fields and harvested corn fields where some of those lovely and interesting water birds rest and feed on various vegetation.        Within a half hour during that stop this November, I saw several majestic Canada geese quietly grazing on short grass in a pasture along the creek and a stately great blue heron wading stealthily in the creek while watching carefully for fish to catch and eat.  And I noticed three elegant, immature bald eagles perched majestically in a tree along Mill Creek.  Those eagles were as brown as the limbs they stood on.      Watching those water birds along Mill Creek, I thought of other ada...

      In winter, when the weather is too cold or snowy for me to want to go outside, I enjoy watching wildlife throughout the United States by live cameras and our home computer screen.  Five kinds of stately wild geese in the Lower 48 States are one of the groups of creatures I regularly see on our computer through live cameras in various locations from the east coast to the west coast.  The five species of geese on our computer, from east to west, are Atlantic brant in salt marshes along the Atlantic Ocean, Canada geese everywhere, snow geese in New Jersey, Maryland, Wisconsin and California, white-fronted geese in California and cackling geese in California.  All these majestic geese are a pleasure to see, and hear in noisy flocks, on water, in the air and on the ground every day from October to March, in the flesh, and on a computer screen when need be.       Brant are a small, dark species that nest on the Arctic tundra and winter i...