natureswondersbyclyde

     Pokeweed is a unique, beautiful plant native to eastern North America.  It is a common, perennial species of sunny, disturbed, human-made habitats, including hedgerows between fields, woodland edges, roadsides, railway shoulders, abandoned fields and similar environs.  Poke is an interesting, bush-like plant that annually grows from underground rootstock, sometimes up to nine feet tall in one growing season.  Some poke can even resemble small trees in one year's development.        Early each May, one or more red poke stems sprout above-ground from each set of perennial roots.  And as each set of roots gets older through the years, its visible red stems become thicker, some up to two inches across at their bases.        Those red, main stems produce broad leaves.  And during June they develop flower buds on several tapering, dangling, red shoots off the main stems.  Flower buds at the base of each stem open first and, after insect pollination, develop into small, greenish-whit

     I enjoy seeing grasshoppers leaping away from me into tall grass and other plants along country roads in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania during late summer.  Those human-made habitats are oases for several kinds of adaptable vegetation and creatures in constantly cultivated farmland that is difficult for wildlife to live in.  Four kinds of grasshoppers, including Carolina, differential, red-legged and meadow, are plentiful here and there, among many local, rural roadsides that are overgrown with a variety of tall grasses and other types of plants that they also ingest.      These kinds of grasshoppers have much in common, besides sharing a built habitat.  They are camouflaged to blend into vegetation for the grasshoppers' safety from critters that would eat them.  All these grasshoppers species ingest grass and other plants along rural roadsides.  They range across much of the United State's grasslands, meadows and roadsides.  Each kind has a pair of large, powerful back le

      Many sunny, un-mowed edges of country roadsides grow tall with plants by August in southeastern Pennsylvania.  These long, lean, human-made habitats are interesting oases of tall, dense vegetation growth and small creatures.  Lovely bouquets of flowers perch obviously on tall plants adapted to disturbed soil, including white flowers on Queen-Anne's-lace, blue blooms of chicory, yellow ones on evening primrose, Canada goldenrod and velvetleaf, and pink blossoms on red clover and brown knapweed.  There are pink or white flowers on bindweed vines that crawl up the many tall foxtail and redtop grass growing thickly along these same roadsides, and corn stalks on the sunny edges of cornfields.  Goldenrods' innumerable, tiny golden blooms are particularly attractive to bees and other kinds of nectar-seeking, pollinating insects.  And by the second week in September, patches of that wild, ten-foot-tall sunflower, with large, yellow flowers, called Jerusalem artichoke, will be blo

     Three kinds of abundant birds in southeastern Pennsylvania, including mourning doves, American goldfinches and cedar waxwings, nest late in summer for a variety of reasons.  Most "song" birds in this area are done raising young by the middle of July, but these three adaptable species could be rearing offspring into early September as a result of being dependent on certain foods or nesting materials that are most abundant in late summer.       Each pair of handsome mourning doves raises two young per brood, but they "put-out" two young a month, on average, from March into September because they rear two broods at a time through the warmer months. Each pair of doves probably can only feed two young at a time because they regurgitate pre-digested seeds into the beaks of their offspring.  But they compensate for that by hatching chicks in spring and summer.       Each pair of doves starts a brood of young early in March.  When that first pair of chicks is half-grow

      Flying fish live in schools in the open ocean in the tropical and temperate regions of the world.  These twelve-inch when adult fish are well-adapted to living in the open ocean, being stream-lined, and powerful swimmers.  They are gray on top and silvery below and on their flanks, which camouflages them on the surfaces of the oceans.  And above all, these intriguing creatures have large, wing-like front fins that allow them to glide through the air, low over the oceans.  Those pectoral fins are their greatest adaptation for survival.      Flying fish don't fly.  Schools of them glide into the wind low over ocean swells when large, predatory fish pursue them.  To escape those fish, flying fish thrash their tails vigorously in the water to gain speed.  Then with more frantic tail-thrashing, they emerge from the water and sail along, into the wind for lift on their front fins, about ten miles per hour and up to six hundred feet before plunging back into the water where they con

     Corvidae is the family name of the related crows, ravens, jays and magpies.  And I have seen blue jays, American crows, fish crows and northern ravens from our back deck at home in southeastern Pennsylvania over the last few years.       All these Corvidae members are adaptable, intelligent and will consume practically anything, reasons for their great success.  Members of this family are present throughout the world, except on some ocean islands and Antarctica.          Beautiful, blue, black and white blue jays live permanently in our neighborhood, and raise young here.  One day in April, a few years ago, I saw a jay with something in its beak in a tree.  Then that jay fed the morsel to his mate, as part of their courtship.  A few weeks later, I found a blue jay on a nest on the top of a seven-foot red juniper tree on our lawn.       Late in summer, through autumn, we see a family of blue jays cavorting boisterously in a group of tall Norway spruce trees in our neighborhood.  An