natureswondersbyclyde

     Recently, I was driving along a country road in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and enjoying the beauty and lushness of trees, meadows, field corn, soybeans and roadside flowers along the way.  At one point, I drove between long fields of tall corn on both sides of the road, creating a tunnel without a roof, except the sky.  Tall grasses and flowering plants vegetated the roadsides between the blacktop and the corn.  Small groups of stream-lined purple martins and barn swallows flashed over the corn fields and the road to catch and eat flying insects, as I cruised by.  Those two local, post-breeding swallow species were gaining fat and strength for their meandering south to avoid the northern winter and find food in warmer climes.  Their gatherings are one of the first signs of the coming autumn.        Little gatherings of house sparrows hopped along the edge of that road to eat weed and grass seeds, and insects....

     While watching birds on Lake Onalaska, a lake off the Mississippi River in Wisconsin, via a live camera and our home computer screen, I heard the "snoring" courtship calling of leopard frogs in shallow water.  I also saw a great blue heron stealthily stalking on its long legs through those shallows after prey animals to catch and consume.  Step by slow, careful, step, the heron eased forward, occasionally stopping to watch intently for its next victim.        Suddenly the great blue thrust its long neck and formidable beak forward and down with lightning speed and grabbed a leopard frog in its bill.  The frog momentarily struggled to get loose, but the heron repeatedly clamped its mandibles on it, quickly killing it.  Then the heron gulped its victim down, whole and head-first.        A dramatic scene, and one that shows the hazardous lives frogs, and other small creatures, lead.  No wonder ea...

     Several acres of human-made habitats just outside of New Holland, Pennsylvania are inhabited by several species of adaptable wildlife.  This environment is composed of two quarter-acre retention basins filled with cattails, overgrown fields, thickets, and pin oak trees planted on a large, regularly-mowed lawn, all on former farmland.  Lush and lovely in its greenness during summer, this built environment provides food and shelter to the attractive and interesting wildlife adjusted to it, as long as it remains at least partly overgrown.      Many kinds of wild plants and animals survive in less than ideal conditions, such as this habitat outside New Holland.  Each type of habitat has its own community of adaptable vegetation and wildlife.  And each wild plant and creature is adjusted to a particular niche that meets its survival needs.  It's amazing and enlightening how many intriguing species of plants and critters have adapted...

     For an hour and a half, in the middle of June of this year, I visited a 200 yard, slow moving, stretch of a Lancaster County, Pennsylvania creek to look for wildlife.  I've stopped there in summer before over the years to experience wild creatures, and saw a few elegant white-tailed deer, mink, muskrats, appealing wood duck families, basking painted turtles and fishing belted kingfishers, to name a few kinds.  Creeks in farmland, such as this one, are oases of water, and creekside thickets of tall weeds and grasses, shrubbery and trees; places where wildlife finds shelter and food, without interference from plowing, sowing, and harvesting crops.        During that hour and a half visit, I saw some of the same interesting wild animal species I've seen before along that part of the creek.  I experienced over a dozen airborne rough-winged swallows, a few nesting red-winged blackbirds, a few pairs of gray catbirds, several croaking...

     For an hour in the middle of June of this year, I visited a four-acre retention basin, surrounded by a ten-acre lawn, to see what wildlife species was using that basin.  This four year old, human-made basin of shallow water in Lancaster County is abundantly pocked with dense stands of cattails, reeds and reed canary-grass, all of which are tall and shelter and feed the adaptable wildlife in that basin.       Red-winged blackbirds dominated that basin with their numbers, activities and voices.  They were there to nest among the high cattails and grasses.  Several striking male red-wings, with their black feathering and red shoulder patches, repeatedly sang "kon-ga-reeeee" from the wind-swayed vegetation.  Those beautiful males also chased each other, and some of the females, around the basin, creating much interesting activity, and, again, showing off those lovely, scarlet shoulder epaulets.          ...

     Six kinds of flycatchers, which is a family of small birds, nest in southeastern Pennsylvania.  Being related, all flycatchers snare flying insects in mid-air and flutter back to a perch to ingest their victims and watch for more.        This family of birds, like all families of life, diverged into different species from a common ancestor to take advantage of flying insects in various habitats, which causes the species.  Each kind of flycatcher in this area has its own niche, in habitats ranging from open meadows to deep woods, which reduces competition for food among them.        Flycatchers in this area have plain feathering, which camouflages them against hawks and other predators, and makes it hard for us to find them.  But males of each kind have a distinctive call that proclaims nesting territories, brings the genders together for raising young, and allows us to detect the birds in hiding, and id...

     I watched wildlife on Lake Onalaska, a large, shallow backwater off the Mississippi River in Wisconsin from late April into mid-June.  I did that through the Raptor Resource's live camera and our computer.      Lake Onalaska has many large mud flats, tall-grass and willow islands and other islands covered by tall, deciduous trees.  That diversity of habitats, including the shallows, make Onalaska a good wildlife refuge, especially during spring and summer.      Spring and summer wildlife at Onalaska can be categorized into residents, migrants and summer nesters.  Some nesters were migrants earlier.  And all the wildlife make Onalaska intriguing and exciting to experience, in person or on line.      Some stalwart-looking bald eagles are permanent residents at Onalaska, including when raising young in tall trees on islands from February into June.  The eagles feed on fish, ducks, coots and other crea...