natureswondersbyclyde

     Today, March 28, 2024, the live camera at Lake Onalaska, a back-water lake off the Mississippi River in Wisconsin, was, for a time, focused on several yards of tall grass on a small, mud flat island, and shallow water in front of that grassy island.  The migrant bird species in those grass and water niches, including flocks of tree swallows, several scattered red-winged blackbirds, a few lesser yellowlegs sandpipers, and a small group of regal ring-necked ducks, were beautiful and inspiring to see in their natural habitats, even when viewed on a computer screen.  All those species recently moved into those niches to rest and feed, but only the red-wings will stay there to raise young among the tall grasses.      Flocks of American white pelicans, sandhill cranes, tundra swans, Canada geese, common goldeneye ducks and ring-billed gulls, plus several bald eagles, were on Lake Onalaska at that same time, but I was focused on the beauties and int...

     While watching for birdlife at Lake Onalaska, a large backwater off the Mississippi River in Wisconsin, on our computer screen on March 21 and 22 of this year, I noticed many each of migrant tree swallows, common goldeneye ducks, bufflehead ducks and ring-necked ducks above and on that lake at the same time.  The swallows were speeding and swerving low to the water to catch flying insects while the three kinds of ducks were diving under water from the surface to ingest small crustaceans, mollucs, aquatic insect larvae and water vegetation.  Each species was obviously refueling to continue its migration to its nesting territories.          Drake goldeneyes were also constantly and vigorously courting females of their kind.  When courting, each drake throws his head back, then snaps it forward with an accompanying kick of his orange legs.      In March, the attractive tree swallows sweep north over the North A...

      On March 19 of this year, I stopped my car to scan a recently plowed field to spot birds on it.  And I did!  Many American robins were scattered across it and a small, mixed group of purple grackles and red-winged blackbirds were on it.  All those handsome birds were there to ingest invertebrates they found in the turned-over soil.        Sometimes in March, I look for flocks of attractive robins and grackles on lawns in southeastern Pennsylvania.  Those birds are exciting, obvious symbols of spring I look forward to seeing every year in this area.  But when I don't see those species on lawns at that time, I look for their gatherings in farmland, specifically in plowed fields and around puddles in short-grass pastures.  Those are human-made habitats where earthworms and other invertebrates are exposed to birds who will eat them.      Plows turn the soil over, exposing invertebrates to flocks of se...

     At dawn, occasionally in April over the years, I've sat quietly in southeastern Pennsylvania woods to listen for the wild drumming of male ruffed grouse and the loud gobbling of tom wild turkeys.  And I've heard both of them!  Those are the ways these elegant, woodland gamebirds advertise their presence to females of their kinds for mating.        At first light on April mornings, each male grouse hops onto "his" drumming log lying dead on a dead-leaf-covered, forest floor, and spotted with his droppings.  At first, he struts back and forth majestically on that, often-moss-covered, log. But soon he stands upright on the log, with his tail fanned out, head crest erect, and the black ruff on his neck puffed out.  Then he vigorously flaps his wings in front of himself, without those wings touching, to create several sudden collisions of trapped air that make low-pitched, thudding sounds that can be heard through the woods....

     In winter, during the 1970's and 1980's, I would see up to a half dozen, or more, rough-legged hawks in an hour's drive by large, open fields harvested to the ground around New Holland, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  Though they appear big, rough-legs mostly prey on field mice.        Rough-legs nest on cliffs in the Arctic tundra, but some came as far south as Pennsylvania to spend  winters searching for mice in extensive, relatively snow-free fields that resemble the treeless tundra.  But during the winters of the 1990's, and through the Twenty-first Century, so far, I noticed a dwindling of rough-legs to almost none all winter in Lancaster County fields that once harbored them.      I think there are three theories why rough-legged hawks are almost nonexistent, locally, in recent years.  One could be a lack of sufficient mice to feed them all through a winter because of intensive, constant cultivation a...

     Every early morning from mid-February through to March 9, 2024, I watched the majestic, exciting migrant water birds on the Platte River in Audubon's Rowe Sanctuary in the beautiful prairie of southcentral Nebraska because of a live camera and our home computer screen.  Those birds are always thrilling to see getting awake, stirring, their eyes reflected by outdoor lights, limbering and exercising their wings, and, finally, taking flight to harvested grain fields to feed on grain scattered on the ground.       Early each morning in the middle of February, I noticed thousands of majestic snow geese of both color phases first on the flats of the Platte where they rested overnight in relative safety.  But I soon saw thousands of elegant, four-foot-tall sandhill cranes standing on the flats and in the flowing shallows of the river.  There they roosted overnight, with each bird tucking its head under a wing.      As the ge...