natureswondersbyclyde

     Two evenings in a row, February 24 and 25, 2024, I saw the moon "rise" beautifully over a low, wooded hill, and the lake at Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area in southeastern Pennsylvania.  And, immediately, the brilliant moonlight reflected on the water created a straight, bright path across the lake. Groups of darkly-silhouetted, elegant snow geese and tundra swans swam through that illuminated pathway, creating a lovely spectacle in the midst of beautiful scenery.      But each breath-taking moonrise occurred under different conditions because of the time of the moon's rising each evening.  On the twenty-fourth, the moon appeared about 6:10 pm, when there still was lovely, brilliant, but fading, sunset in the western sky.  The geese and swans' white feathers were easily seen on the dark water.        On the twenty-fifth, however, the moon rose about 7:05 pm, when the sky was dark, and the geese and swans were silhouetted black when their gatherings flew in

     Through a live camera and our home computer screen, I have "visited" the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge in Central California during this February to see what water birds were wintering there.  I was thrilled to see many each of northern shovelers, northern pintails, green-winged teal, all of which are kinds of ducks, white-fronted geese, snow geese and American coots dominating the refuge's shallow retention basins between feeding forays in fresh-water, emergent, tall-grass marshes and neighboring fields.  I never saw so many shovelers in one spot in my whole life.      It was exciting to notice varying-sized flocks of each kind of water bird swimming on the basins, sometimes almost "wall to wall", or winging off, or sweeping down onto the basins and nearby marshes with a splash per bird.  Many of those water birds were hidden in the marshes, until they flew up and away, with a roar of wings.      Drake shovelers are handsome fellows, with green heads

     Over several years, I have had many exciting encounters with owls in southeastern Pennsylvania, including permanent resident great horned owls, screech owls, barred owls and barn owls, and wintering long-eared owls and snowy owls.  The owls and their calls are another bit of the wild here, as elsewhere.  And all owls prey on creatures smaller than themselves.        At dawn and dusk, through the years, I've heard several pairs of horned owls hooting repeatedly and boisterously to each other in woods and older suburbs, particularly during December when they are courting.  We hear a pair of these wonderful owls in our suburban neighborhood, sometimes in the middle of the night.  Usually, all these two-foot-tall birds are chilling voices in the twilight, but occasionally I see one of those handsomely camouflaged owls perched in a tree or flying between trees.      In this area, each beautiful female horned owl lays one to three eggs in an open, stick cradle high in a treetop, usu

     Rafts of several kinds of diving, bay ducks winter on the broad expanses of the Chesapeake Bay, including common goldeneyes, buffleheads, three kinds of scoters, red-breasted mergansers, canvasbacks, redheads, two closely related species of scaups, and ruddy ducks.  And of all these kinds of ducks wintering on estuaries and harbors off the oceans, the scaups, which are also known as bluebills, buffleheads and ruddies are the most common.  Each species can be spotted in large rafts of their own, or in mixed flotillas of hundreds of ducks, on larger bodies of water.  There those buoyantly bobbing ducks rest and sleep between feeding forays.        Diving ducks are entertaining to watch leaping or rolling forward slightly from the surface of estuaries and harbors to dive under water several feet down to get food on the bottom of those estuaries and harbors.  I enjoy watching them dive on large waters through live cameras and our computer screen.        The speedy flight of bay ducks