natureswondersbyclyde

      On May 15 of this year, I brought up the mud flats and shallow braids of the Platte River in Audubon's Rowe Wildlife Sanctuary in southcentral Nebraska's prairie through their live camera and our computer screen.  Immediately, I saw a variety of north-bound shorebirds ( sandpipers and plovers) by the hundreds on the mud flats and in the slow-current shallows where they were catching and consuming invertebrates from the mud.  And I saw flocks of migrant tree swallows skimming swiftly among each other low over the water and flats in hot pursuit of flying insects to eat.  Obviously, there is no competition between shorebirds and swallows for food.        The water level of the Platte fluctuates often and dramatically, which keeps many mud flats bare of vegetation.  Bare flats suit the brown or gray shorebirds looking for food.  Well-camouflaged, sandpipers and plovers are not easily seen on the flats until they scamper ...

     From April into summer, many short-grass lawns in southeastern Pennsylvania are sprinkled with golden bits among dominating dandelion and white clover flowers.  The gold is small, yellow blossoms of Indian strawberry and common yellow wood sorrel plants that add more natural beauties to lawns.      These perennial, ground-hugging plants have many characteristics in common on the human-made habitats they share, including roadsides, fields and lawns.  These plants of both kinds grow so close to the ground that many of them are not cut off by lawn mowers.  In fact, cutting grass short allows more sunlight to reach these prostrate species.            Each of these flowering species has five yellow petals on each lovely bloom and three leaflets on each leaf.  Patches of both pretty plants are cheery to see nestling in the short grass.  Both kinds are pollinated by bees, flies and other smaller inse...

     Choke cherry trees are small, and favor rich, moist soil and a limestone bedding, all of which are prevalent here in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, as well as across much of northern North America. They are trees of rural roadsides, and thickets between fields and along woodland edges.  They are shade tolerant and flourish in the shade of larger trees in those thickets.      In April, as leaves grow on choke cherry twigs, one or more broods of tent caterpillars, which are the larvae of a small moth, hatch on many choke cherry trees.  Each group of siblings creates a protective, silvery web in a crotch of twigs where they live by day in relative safety.  However, two species of American cuckoos pull many caterpillars from their webs to devour them, fuzz and all.        Every night, except in rainy weather, surviving larvae emerge from their web homes to consume choke cherry foliage.  They lay down trails of ...

      Common dandelions grow cheery, yellow flowers on lawns in southeastern Pennsylvania from the middle of April into May.  Some lawns become wall to wall golden with beautiful dandelion blooms for a couple of weeks.        By late April, pollinated dandelion blossoms quickly go to seed on foot-tall-plus stalks, a reason why this plant is difficult to eradicate.  The stems grow tall to get the seeds up into the wind, which disperses them across the countryside.           Some dandelion flowers form on one-inch stems.  The plants that grow them adapted to repeated mowing that cuts off long stalks, but misses the short ones.  Therefore, dandelion blossoms on short stems produce seeds and, because of genetics, flowers on short stems, nestled in short grass, eventually dominate many regularly mowed lawns.        Many dandelion seeds blow away on the wind, carried along by the...

     Grape hyacinth and common blue violets together beautifully paint some lawns in southeastern Pennsylvania purple during much of April each year.  Both these species of lovely, flowering plants, nestling in short grass on those human-made habitats, add much beauty to them, free.      Though blossoming together on many lawns, grape hyacinths and blue violets have little in common.  These hyacinths are originally from Europe, while violets are native to North America.  Hyacinths belong to the lily family, while violets are in the violet family.  Hyacinths grow from planted bulbs, but violets are completely wild, popping up where they will.      Prevalent in the northeastern United States, grape hyacinths spread out of the flower beds they were planted in.  Each plant has a few grass-like leaves and a ten-inch flower stalk that extends above the leaves.  That stem supports a tight, tapered cluster of small, ball...

     The adaptable and abundant carpenter bees and cabbage white butterflies are two of the first insects visible on lawns and fields on warm afternoons in April in southeastern Pennsylvania.  They had overwintered in the protective ground and emerged as adult insects in the first real warmth of spring.  And both these common insects are well-adapted to human-made habitats.         Some years ago, we had an old wooden railing around our front porch.  Some of the wood was rotting and soft, a perfect place for fertile female carpenter bees to raise young.  A half dozen females chewed round holes a few inches deep under the railing for nurseries, until we removed it.           And during April, I've seen scores of female carpenter bees around barns and covered bridges where they look for places of softer wood to chew upward from below to keep out rain.  When each hole is completed, each female ca...

     Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge is near the Chesapeake Bay on Maryland's flat Eastern Shore, halfway down that estuary.  I watched that refuge's wintering birds through its live cameras and our home computer screen from mid-November, 2022 to late February of 2023.      I enjoyed the beauties of the Blackwater River, marshes of yellow-brown phragmites and tall grass and the channels that flow through those marshes, and the green of loblolly pine woods.  Those natural habitats make the refuge appear wild and lovely, even during the dormancy of winter.        Flocks of majestic Canada geese, elegant tundra swans, stream-lined northern pintail ducks and graceful ring-billed gulls, and a few each of great blue herons, bald eagles, northern harriers and red-winged blackbirds dominated Blackwater's above-mentioned, natural habitats, and its human-made impoundments through winter.  The constant, day and night calling...