natureswondersbyclyde

      American coots are unique birds in marshes and open, fresh waters across much of North America, from southern Canada to Ecuador.  They are unusual in that they appear to be chicken-like, with chicken habits, and duck-like, with duck habits, all at the same time.  But, of course, they are not related to chickens or ducks.  They are in the Rallidae family of birds, related to the secretive rails and gallinules.      Coots are attractive in their own way, with chunky, rounded bodies, like chickens, slate-gray body feathering, with black heads, white, chicken-like beaks and dull-green legs and feet.  While walking on shores and in fields, they use their bills to pick up seeds, greens, especially grass, and invertebrates from the soil, as chickens do.  Each of their eight toes has lobes that aid coots in swimming, and diving under water from the surface to get aquatic vegetation and invertebrates, as some ducks do.   ...

      This February, 2025, I watched flocks of Canada geese, tundra swans and snow geese on an 800-acre lake at Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area, owned by the Pennsylvania Game Commission in southeastern Pennsylvania, by the commission's live camera and our home computer screen, as I do every spring.  And on February 10 to the 12th I enjoyed polarized weather at Middle Creek, as well.        On February tenth, a pretty, sunny late-afternoon added to the beauty of the geese and swans on that lake and in the air over it.  Beige grass fields and gray woods surrounded that lovely lake and its stately birds.  And later that evening, I saw the waterfowl at rest on the lake's water and ice, under several stars and the nearly full moon; an inspiring sight.      But February 11 and 12 had different weather, with cloudy skies, snow flurries and a bit of fog by late afternoon, making the landscape dreary to many people....

      The adaptations of life on Earth is, seemingly, unending.  Probably every niche on this planet is used by at least one kind of plant, fungus or animal.  That came to my mind again while watching a nature documentary on you tube T V about life in the open ocean, narrated by David Attenborough.  As part of his narration, Attenborough noted that Columbus crabs are a half-inch, pelagic species that shelter among clumps of floating plants and trees that fell into the oceans, and under floating human-made debris, including lumber, discarded fish nets, collections of plastic objects and other objects.          This extraordinary, little crab's name is also unusual.  It is thought that these tiny crabs were first discovered by Christopher Columbus on one of his voyages west on the Atlantic Ocean.  He might have noticed them on plants in the Sargasso Sea.       As an interesting pelagic species, Colum...

     Some years ago, when I lived in Neffsville, Pennsylvania, I trimmed shrubbery on my lawn and piled the limbs in a shallow ditch to let them decompose.  One afternoon in August, a thunderstorm dumped a deluge of rain on Neffsville.  The ditch soon filled with water that ran through my brush pile in the ditch.  I watched to see if any critters would emerge from the heap to escape the water.  Sure enough, within a minute, an opossum, North America's only marsupial, emerged from that brush pile and climbed a nearby tree.  And about a minute later, a striped skunk crawled out of that pile of boughs and waddled across our lawn to higher ground.  I was happy to see both those mammals in our yard.       I've seen many skunks and possums in southeastern Pennsylvania over the years, most of them on lawns and along country roads, and mostly at night.  These mammals have some traits in common.  Both are adaptable, eat a...