natureswondersbyclyde

      At least a few pairs of mourning doves nest in our suburban neighborhood in New Holland, Pennsylvania.  I see them here from early February, when their nesting season begins until mid to late September, when it ends.  These beautiful, interesting birds are well-adapted to living among peoples' activities in suburbs and farmland, human-made habitats that have increased dove numbers dramatically.      Mourning doves, like many life forms, notice the increased amount of daylight each succeeding day in January, which stirs their hormones.  The doves respond with repetitive cooing during warm afternoons in early February, which, along with northern cardinals, are the first bird songs I hear in our suburban neighborhood.  That cooing, and the male doves' courtship flights of several deep wing beats alternating with long, circular glides over their hoped-for nesting territories, strengthens each pair's bond.       Duri...

      When snow flies in the northeastern United States, seed-eating birds fly, too- straight to a source of readily available food, including at bird feeders.  Through a live camera and our computer screen, I regularly watch birds at a group of five feeders in a successional woods in southern Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  Those woods also have thickets, little, weedy open areas, and a stream flowing through.  The gray woodland and thickets offer shelter to the birds, gray squirrels, and flying squirrels at night.      Well-stocked by Lancaster County Conservancy staff, those feeders are constantly visited by birds wintering in nearby woods and thickets.  Those birds are artificially concentrated because of the lure of the easily-obtained grain, but they are beautiful, and interesting to watch at the feeders, especially during snowy days.      As snow falls, the many birds at the feeders seem exceptionally frantic to fe...

      Barnacle geese are interesting for where they hatch goslings- high on rocky cliffs in northeast Greenland, Spitzbergen Island and northwest Siberia.  They do that to keep their eggs and newly-hatched goslings away from Arctic foxes, Arctic wolves and polar bears.  But the geese and their goslings have no food on those cliffs.  Therefore, the goslings must leap off those cliffs and drop to the grassy tundra below.      On the tundra, at the bases of the cliffs, each pair of barnacle geese call to their three or four goslings to take the plunge, which they do.  One after another, the goslings leap off their nurseries and bounce and tumble off boulders down the faces of the cliffs to their rocky bottoms.  There the surviving goslings join their parents to march to nearby patches of grass close to water to feed on that grass.        Most of those fuzzy-gray, camouflaged youngsters survive their fall, but s...

      "Gray squirrel, gray squirrel, shake your bushy tail", goes the childrens' song.  And those squirrels do, as a communication to their relatives.  I enjoy seeing the antics of gray squirrels in our suburban neighborhood in southeastern Pennsylvania, and wherever they may be.        Gray squirrels are common in the eastern United States; in maturing woods, successional woods, older suburbs with many planted trees, and in farmland with hedgerows and woodland edges.  They are adaptable and intelligent, and interesting to watch.  Many of these squirrels find ways of getting at seeds in so-called squirrel-proof bird feeders.  They all have "highways in the trees" they travel along.  At home, I daily see a gray squirrel running along a decorative fence in a neighbor's yard to get grain at a bird feeder.  Every day, that squirrel is vulnerable to house cats, red-tailed hawks and Cooper's hawks.  And I have wat...

     Peregrine falcons are a stately kind of raptor that traditionally has nested in crevices high in rocky cliffs, particularly near rivers, throughout much of the world.  Unfortunately, their numbers in the United States had been depleted in the mid-twentieth century due to the use of DDT pesticides, shooting and egg collecting.  However, in recent decades, they have made a strong comeback in the United States, to the point that they seem relatively common these days.  DDT use is a thing of the past, peregrines are protected by laws and, most importantly, they have adapted to raising young on the ledges of tall buildings and under large bridges over rivers, places that must remind them of shelves on cliffs.  All those human-made nesting spots are in and near cities.        Furthermore, peregrines have also adapted to rearing offspring in nest boxes erected on cliffs, usually near rivers.  Their adjusting to hatching youn...

     In winter, the adaptable and widespread red junipers and broom grass are decorative along expressways and some abandoned fields and meadows in southeastern Pennsylvania, and other places in the eastern United States.  These two kinds of abundant, successional plants are the most distinctive and attractive species in those human-made habitats, helping to beautify them.      Red junipers have green needles the year around, which are outstanding among the grays, browns and yellows of deciduous shrubbery, weeds and grasses they stand among.  Junipers' needles are small, densely-packed, fragrant and sharp-pointed, which offer cover to small birds, including nesting field sparrows, song sparrows and American goldfinches and wintering, seed-eating dark-eyed juncos, white-crowned sparrows and tree sparrows.          Many people call these junipers "red cedars," but these conifers are in the juniper genus.  However, ...

     During December 18 and 19, 2024, while doing errands close to home in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, I happened to see four kinds of common, adaptable birds, an American kestrel, a pair of eastern bluebirds, and a small flock each of American robins and dark-eyed juncos, feeding on what they could in winter.  These species are just a few of the many kinds of wild fowl annually wintering and feeding in my home area.       The kestrel was perched on a roadside wire with a mouse in its talons.  It flew up as my vehicle went by, circled behind me and immediately landed again on the same wire to finish its mouse meal.  That pretty, little falcon probably caught the corn and seed fed rodent along a vegetated roadside, between the blacktop, country road I was driving on and a harvested corn field in farmland.       A quarter mile down that same country road, I saw a lovely pair of eastern bluebirds perched on a wire....