natureswondersbyclyde

     While watching wildlife at Lake Onalaska through a live camera and our computer screen, I noticed mixed flocks of bank swallows and tree swallows perched on the twigs of trees on an alluvial island in the lake.  They were all post-breeding birds gathering together early in August, prior to their migrations south ahead of the coming winter.  And because these swallow species are attracted to larger bodies of fresh water to catch and eat flying insects, the swallows' coming together at Lake Onalaska before drifting south is natural and inevitable.        The swallows were all aflutter on their roost between feeding forays after flying insects.  Those birds preened their feathers, socialized and rested and digested while on those trees.      Lake Onalaska is a large backwater off the Mississippi River in Wisconsin.  It is a good wildlife habitat the year around, but especially in summer.      That congregation of bank swallows and tree swallows, resting in trees with their youngs

     One warm, lovely afternoon in August of this year in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania farmland, I saw several kinds of insects, most notably several digger wasps, a milkweed tiger moth caterpillar and a white-marked tussock moth caterpillar.        The digger wasps were flying from one mint plant to another in a lovely patch of mint plants along a country road, and crawling over tiny, attractive pale-lavender mint flowers to sip their sugary nectar.  The mint plants were over a foot tall, fragrant as mints should be and had an abundance of blossoms.        Living across the United States, digger wasps have three-quarter inch bodies and one-inch wing spans.  And they are handsome in their variety of colors.  Their heads, thoraxes, wings and the front half of their abdomens are black.  The back half of their abdomens is orange with two yellow spots.        Female digger wasps dig into soil to find June beetle grubs.  Each female stings every beetle larva she finds to paralyze it.  The

     While watching bird activity on Lake Onalaska, a back-water off the Mississippi River in Wisconsin, by live camera and our computer screen in mid-August of this year, I saw a few kinds of birds involved in a fishing frenzy.  Flocks of American white pelicans, ring-billed gulls and double-crested cormorants, in that order of abundance, plus a few each of great egrets and Caspian terns, were excited to be catching fish.  And they were all exciting to watch catching fish in one place, at once, each species in its own way.        Majestic pelicans formed a group on shallow water and herded fish into a tight school.  Then all the pelicans together dipped their great, open beaks gracefully into the water, time after time, to scoop up as many fish as they could before the fish slipped away.        Each bird in gatherings of ring-bills hovers momentarily just above the water and drops into it to seize one fish at a time in its beak.  The many gulls dropping gracefully to the water, then u

     During summer, I sometimes enjoy seeing a few or more metallic-green, male black-winged damselflies fluttering and dancing in shafts of sunlight low over clear-running streams in shady woodlands.  Flashing green, these striking male damselflies are fighting for territories along the streams they will use to display to females of their kind, and mate with them.       Black-winged and bluet damselflies commonly live along streams in southeastern Pennsylvania, and in much of the United States.  But each kind has its own niche along those waterways.  Black-wings inhabit shaded streams in woods, while bluets live in sunny meadows of the same waterways.  That diversity of niches reduces competition for food and space between these damselflies species.  But these damselflies overlap here and there because their habitats do.  There I see both kinds in a small stretch of stream, much to my pleasure.          These two kinds of damselflies, and their relatives, have characteristics in commo

     One August afternoon in 2023, I discovered a "deep" of water about twenty feet long, twelve feet across and two feet deep.  It was part of a little, running brook in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania cropland.  Tall grass, Queen-Anne's-lace, daisy fleabane, common milkweed and other tall plants surrounded that little deep right up to its shoreline.  I  used binoculars to look into that hole's clear depths for aquatic wildlife living in it.           Crayfish were the most common creatures in that deep.  Several of them, of all ages and sizes, walked along the muddy bottom in search of algae, rotting materials and other edibles.  They were a bit difficult to locate and see because they were so well camouflaged on the mud, and by the rocks they hide under when not looking for food.      A small school each of killifish and blunt-nosed minnows swam gracefully into the slight current of the deep and watched for invertebrates to be carried into the deep by the brook'