natureswondersbyclyde

      New Jersey's barrier islands along the Atlantic Ocean coastline have long been developed into homes and other buildings, except for Island Beach State Park, which is still mostly natural.  By a live camera and our home computer screen, I had daily been watching a small section of the shoreline of Long Beach Island, one of Jersey's developed barrier islands, during November of 2020.        Long Beach Island, which is developed from end to end, has only remnant natural areas on the side overlooking Barnegat Bay, which is salt water between that long, lean island and the Jersey mainland.  But a limited number of wildlife species, including a few kinds of waterfowl and gulls, live on those bayside natural areas, whose shores are lapped by Barnegat Bay.      Every day this November, when I watched our computer screen, I saw brant, in groups of 8 to 180, either swimming or flying across Barnegat Bay to that particular litt...

      I like where southeastern Pennsylvania's woods, thickets and maturing suburbs mix.  I also like a mix of colorful, deciduous leaves and conifers' green needles at the end of October and into mid-November.                  By that time, most deciduous trees and shrubs are bare.  As curtains of dead, colored foliage fall away in suburban areas, the green beauties of planted conifers become ever more visible.  And the few red, brown and yellow leaves still remaining on some trees and bushes offer a lovely contrast to the green coniferous trees.  Those remnant autumn leaves still on their woody twigs and evergreen needles compliment each other's beauties into the middle of November.  And dead, but lovely, fallen  leaves are scattered over the ground of the still-green lawns, making that human-made niche more beautiful.  And woods and thickets become wilder looking as autumn slips into w...

     Several woody-stemmed plants, including native red maple trees, and alien Norway maple, Japanese red maple, weeping cherry and Bradford pear trees, and alien barberry bushes and burning bushes are commonly planted on lawns in southeastern Pennsylvania, as elsewhere.  These deciduous trees and shrubs on lawns have striking, colored leaves in mid-November, which is later than on wild trees and shrubbery, prolonging the autumn beauties of those lawns, including ours at home.           Red maples are covered with red leaves in the middle of November.  That brilliant foliage lights up the area where those trees stand, and helps lift spirits on gray days.         Norway maples have yellow foliage that also brighten lawns.  And these yard trees can become large, and riddled with cavities that gray squirrels, raccoons, chickadees, barred and screech owls, and other creatures live and raise young in. ...

      One afternoon in late October of 2020, I saw a small group of golden plovers sweep in rapid flight low over a recently harvested potato field that was mostly bare ground, and also inhabited by resident horned larks.  The plovers were exciting to see because they had come from the Arctic tundra where they nest, and were migrating to bare soil and shorelines in South America to escape the northern winter.  They stopped on bare ground here, and elsewhere, to fill up on invertebrates to have fuel for the next part of their journey.        I don't see flocks of horned larks or golden plovers in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania's bare ground fields until those birds fly swiftly in little flocks over those fields, or across rural roads in front of my vehicle.  And I seldom see golden plover flocks here at all, though I have seen several groups locally over many years, simply by luck.  But I was in the right place at the right time...

      I've never visited Alaska until the summer and autumn of 2020, by live camera at a couple of small sites on Brook's River in Katmai National Park, at the base of the Aluetian Islands, and on our computer screen.  The cameras are focused mostly on brown bears fattening on live sockeye salmon going upstream to spawn in summer and dead salmon in fall until at least the end of October, before winter sets in.  But the cameras reveal that other kinds of wildlife also benefit from dead salmon in the river in fall.  The economy of all that wildlife is based on fish.      By late October, this part of Alaska looks like winter.  Daylight each succeeding day is noticeably shorter.  Tall grasses along river shores are yellow and spruces back from the shore a little stand out against bare deciduous forests in the background.          In autumn, many brown bears and brown bear families converge on Brook's River...

      On the afternoon of October 14, 2020, Sue and I went to French Creek State Park in southeastern Pennsylvania for a couple of hours to enjoy the sunny, lovely day, colored leaves and whatever wildlife we would spot.  The fall foliage hadn't reached its peak, but there was still plenty of yellow, red and orange among the deciduous trees.        We saw little wildlife while driving along blacktop roads in the woods.  But the beauties of colored leaves, the many tiny, yellow flowers on tall goldenrod stems and pale-lavender aster blooms made up for that.  The wildlife was in the woods, but we drove from place to place without really looking for them.      But we did stop for about 45 minutes at scenic Hopewell Lake in the park.  At first we saw only a few kayakers.  But with scanning that impoundment with 16 power binoculars and a little patience, we began to notice a few kinds of wildlife.   ...

      October is a beautiful, unique month in southeastern Pennsylvania farmland, as it is across much of the northern hemisphere.  Here it is full of the beauties of orange pumpkins lying in fields, brightly-colored, deciduous leaves, lovely wild flowers, nuts, berries and seeds, migrating birds and wooly caterpillars crossing rural roads in search of sheltering places to spend the winter.      In October, certain trees and vines, including staghorn sumac trees, sassafras trees, poison ivy vines and Virginia creeper vines, have strikingly red, yellow and orange leaves that help beautify roadsides and certain, abandoned fields in local farmland.  The vines climb trees and fences to reach sunlight, causing their beautifully colored leaves to be more visible in fall.      Goldenrod with their many clusters of tiny, yellow flowers on tall stems and a kind of aster with many lovely, pale-purple blooms help make country roadsides and fie...