natureswondersbyclyde

     Thickets of shrubbery, vines and sapling trees provide food and cover for a variety of birds and mammals in southeastern Pennsylvania during winter.  Most thickets in this area are human-made, caused by timbering, fires and cultivation that was abandoned.  Thickets also form along sunny woodland edges bordering fields and hedgerows between fields.  Young vegetation develops quickly, and thickly, in full sunlight, providing shelter in abundance that wildlife uses, including in winter.      Berries are some of the main wildlife foods in thickets during winter.  Shrubs with decorative, red berries include multiflora rose, Tatarian honeysuckle and barberries.  Staghorn sumac trees have fuzzy, red berries in pyramid-shaped clusters.  Vines that drape over trees and bushes include bittersweet that produce striking, orange berries, while poison ivy vines bear off-white ones and Virginia creepers produced deep-purple ones.  Hackberry trees have dark berries through winter.  Some locally w

     I have been happily watching thousands of wintering geese and ducks at Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge in California's Central Valley during December of 2023 through a live camera and our home computer screen.  Every winter, parts of that refuge of large marshes and shallow ponds are flooded with flocks of those stately birds in spectacular, noisy pageantry that is exciting and inspiring.       Majestic white-fronted geese are common at Sacramento Refuge.  These western birds are dark-brown all over, each with a pink beak, yellow legs and feet, and white feathering at the base of is bill.  White fronts nest on the Arctic tundra of northern Greenland and northern Canada, but winter along the Gulf Coast and Pacific Coast.      Having raised goslings on the Arctic tundra, blizzards of snow geese also winter at this refuge, where they outnumber other kinds of geese.  In flight, snow geese resemble a blizzard of giant flakes swirling across the sky.  When those many thousands o

      Today, wild rock pigeons live in cities and farmland throughout much of the world, including here in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  These beautiful, wild birds have adapted well to the buildings and agricultural lands of people, wherever they occur.  Rock pigeons traditionally live and nest on Mediterranean Sea Cliffs in Europe, and were long ago domesticated for meat, eggs and as show birds.      The attractive wild rock pigeons have gray feathering all over with darker markings on their wings.  They also have white rumps, red legs and a light-sheen of green and purple on their necks.  However, there are many domestic varieties of rock doves these days with feathering from white to brown or black and any number of plumage patterns.        Some of those domestics escape captivity, join flocks of wild, gray pigeons, and pair up with those feral birds.  The result is an unending variety of feather patterns on free-roaming birds.  But a majority of pigeons still display the origin

     Gadwalls and American wigeons are kinds of dabbling ducks that use their shovel-like bills to scoop up aquatic vegetation from shallow water in ponds and lakes through winter.  Members of both kinds tip-up, with their tails pointing skyward, while reaching their long necks down in the water to dislodge and consume water plants.  Each duck does that repeatedly until full.      Meanwhile, wintering American coots and diving ducks slip under water from the surface of deeper water to dredge up water vegetation and float to the surface with it, where they swallow it.  Again, those birds dive repeatedly until full.          After each dive, the coots and diving ducks must surface to gulp air and swallow the plants they emerged with.  And that's when those feathered divers are hijacked of the food they surfaced with.  Gadwalls and wigeons watch coots and diving ducks plunge into deeper water and watch for them to surface again.       Often the coots and diving ducks bring up more veg

     I was happy to see many each of large, elegant bald eagles, tundra swans and Canada geese wintering on the Mississippi River and adjoining Lake Onalaska from mid-November until today, December 1, 2023.  I watched groups of the three species standing and sitting on recently frozen ice, and many of the swans and geese floating on water not yet frozen.  Several of the majestic eagles stood on gravelly, grass-tufted flats, or perched on tall trees by the river.  I did all that through live cameras and our home computer screen.      I saw some of those wintering birds of each kind in magnificent flight over the bleak, but beautiful, river and lake.  They make time spent watching them, even on a computer screen, enjoyable and inspiring.  The eagles are always majestic when soaring swiftly across the sky.  And the loudly calling and honking swans and geese, in their elegant, airborne lines and V-formations, are always thrilling to experience, no matter how many times I do.        Many of