natureswondersbyclyde

     Occasionally I visit an overgrown storm water drainage ditch near home in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania to see what wild plants and creatures inhabit it.  A row of young red juniper trees were planted between that ditch and a blacktop parking lot.  Those junipers shelter birds such as northern mockingbirds, American robins and the like.  And the junipers' pretty, pale-blue, berry-like cones are eaten by mockers, robins, starlings, cedar waxwings and other kinds of berry-eating birds in fall and winter.  A mockingbird is usually among those junipers the year around.          That ditch is about thirty yards long and ten yards wide.  It is one of many hundreds of little, abandoned back areas in this area that become tiny wildlife habitats, and examples of nature healing itself after human activities destroyed the original habitats and then deserted them.  Several kinds of plants pioneered this ditch and made into a bit of a wildlife refuge, as well as those plants holding down

     In the middle of October, 2024, while waiting in our car while my wife was in the doctor's office, I noticed several yellow cloudless sulphur butterflies flying low over a recently mowed lawn on the border of a suburban area and farmland in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  Driving closer to that lawn, I saw those yellow butterflies were sipping nectar from tiny, golden wood sorrel flowers that were so short they were not mowed off.  I noticed, too, there were a few each of cabbage white butterflies, meadow fritillary butterflies and skipper butterflies of at least two kinds also getting nectar from wood sorrel blossoms.  I was impressed how those butterflies all made use of the only blooms left on that short-grass lawn, a human-made habitat.       While watching the butterflies for a few minutes, I saw a couple flocks of about twenty wild pigeons each flying strongly and gracefully across the sky, and round and round over nearby fields.  Eventually, those handsome pigeons land

     Many cow pastures of green grass in southeastern Pennsylvania farmland have a brook or stream flowing sparkling-clear through them.  Those pretty, little waterways provide fresh water for grazing livestock.  Currents of some of those brooks and streams gouge out mud and stones, here and there, from waterway bottoms, creating small, deeper "holes" in them.  The current is slower in those little holes, providing places where wildlife settles without having to battle stronger currents as they would in shallow water.  Green alga grows on some of the rocks in those holes and tall grass and other plants, including forget-me-nots, arrowheads, smartweeds, evening primrose, bur-marigolds, sneezeweeds and bittersweet nightshade, flourish on the edges of many holes.        Several kinds of aquatic creatures live in those small "holes" in meadow waterways.  But each hole harbors a unique community of critters; no two hole communities are alike.        Little schools of str