natureswondersbyclyde

      One late afternoon in the middle of December, 2022, I was sitting in a car in the parking lot of a shopping mall waiting for friends.  Suddenly, I saw a little whirlwind of birds flitting and scrambling low to the blacktop, right beside the car I was in.  They were house sparrows, looking for edible tidbits from careless shoppers among parked cars.  When something edible was found, several of those little brown birds would flutter to that food and compete vigorously with each other for it.      Although American crows, ring-billed gulls, rock pigeons and starlings can also be spotted looking for food on parking lots at times, that afternoon I saw only house sparrows.  But they put on a show.      We have a suburban lawn full of house sparrows the year around; which is fine with me.  Some people don't like these weaver finches from Eurasia that were introduced to the United States over a hundred years ago.  ...

      Whenever we drive on expressways in the Middle Atlantic States, I watch for wild birds and mammals on the grassy shoulders of those broad highways, and in the air above them.  And I always see at least a few adaptable species on every trip.        All species appear to be used to the traffic whizzing by.  Each kind has a reason for being near those expressways that are potentially dangerous to wildlife.  And those critters add interesting life where we don't think it would exist.       It's exciting to see flocks of majestic Canada geese feeding on short grass in expressway cloverleafs where they are away from speeding traffic.  And it's thrilling to see their airborne, bugling gatherings parachuting down to those grassy cloverleafs to feed.      Flocks of post-breeding starlings land on the edges of expressways and their cloverleafs to get food.  They quickly walk about and rapidly...

     Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge in the Central Valley of California is particularly intriguing in autumn when several kinds of handsome waterfowl gather on its shallow impoundments to rest between feeding forays.  And I saw several other interesting species of birds and mammals in this refuge in the fall of 2022.  All that I enjoyed through a live camera and our home computer screen.       Hordes of beautiful northern pintail ducks daily rested on the refuge's impoundments from mid-October into winter.  The slender, striking drakes have chocolate, white and pale-gray patterned feathering, and long, thin tails, which are unique to puddle ducks.  Female pintails are also slim, and have camouflaged brown and speckled plumages.      But pintails' courtship flights in fall, winter and early spring are their most interesting and entertaining characteristic that sets them apart from their relatives.  Four or fi...

      Lake Onalaska, a large backwater off the Mississippi River, was full of birds from September to mid-November of 2022.  I daily saw those birds via a live camera on the Mississippi Flyway in Wisconsin and our home computer screen.        Non-breeding American white pelicans, double-crested cormorants and ring-billed gulls dominated the shallows and mudflats of Onalaska during September.  All these birds are fish-eaters, but catch their prey in different ways.  Groups of pelicans float in a line in shallow water to herd fish into schools.  Then the pelicans, all together, lunge forward with beaks open and in the water to scoop up bunches of fish.  Cormorants dive under water from the surface to snare fish in their bills, one at a time.  And gulls catch fish from the surface of the water.  Gulls also scavenge dead fish.       Little groups of red-winged blackbirds swayed on the tops of wild...

      This November, I stopped along a stretch of Mill Creek in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania farmland to see what birds and mammals were stirring.  I occasionally visit that part of Mill Creek in winter because I sometimes see a small variety of water-loving birds on the creek, and surrounding meadows, rye fields and harvested corn fields where some of those lovely and interesting water birds rest and feed on various vegetation.        Within a half hour during that stop this November, I saw several majestic Canada geese quietly grazing on short grass in a pasture along the creek and a stately great blue heron wading stealthily in the creek while watching carefully for fish to catch and eat.  And I noticed three elegant, immature bald eagles perched majestically in a tree along Mill Creek.  Those eagles were as brown as the limbs they stood on.      Watching those water birds along Mill Creek, I thought of other ada...

      In winter, when the weather is too cold or snowy for me to want to go outside, I enjoy watching wildlife throughout the United States by live cameras and our home computer screen.  Five kinds of stately wild geese in the Lower 48 States are one of the groups of creatures I regularly see on our computer through live cameras in various locations from the east coast to the west coast.  The five species of geese on our computer, from east to west, are Atlantic brant in salt marshes along the Atlantic Ocean, Canada geese everywhere, snow geese in New Jersey, Maryland, Wisconsin and California, white-fronted geese in California and cackling geese in California.  All these majestic geese are a pleasure to see, and hear in noisy flocks, on water, in the air and on the ground every day from October to March, in the flesh, and on a computer screen when need be.       Brant are a small, dark species that nest on the Arctic tundra and winter i...

     One sunny, cool afternoon this October, I drove around my home town of New Holland in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania to look for beauties of autumn in that town's human-made suburbs.  A crisp breeze indicated that fall definitely prevailed and nature is still in charge.  And I felt the life, the wild of nature within a mile of home.         Striking colored leaves on planted deciduous trees, including red foliage on red maples, bright-orange leaves on sugar maples, maroon and yellow foliage on white ashes, and yellow on honey locusts, were the most obvious of autumn beauties on my excursion around town.  Those cheery, autumn leaves certainly illuminated and brightened New Holland, and were enjoyed by many people.      Evergreen spruce trees and white pines offer dark backgrounds to colored, deciduous leaves.  And those conifers literally emerge from behind falling curtains of deciduous foliage.    ...