Red Junipers and Bradford Pears

     Red juniper and Bradford pear trees are common in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  They have several traits in common and beauties exclusive to themselves.  Both species flourish better in ample sunlight.  Both are common along country roads and in abandoned fields.  These plants produce patches of themselves that are up to an acre large.  And they are scattered by seeds in bird droppings and feed a variety of rodents and small birds.
     Red junipers are native to this area, coniferous and in the juniper genus of trees.  Their red wood is used to make delightfully fragrant cedar chests and closets.  But these sturdy conifers are also attractive in the wild, because of their evergreen needles and lovely, light-blue fleshy cones that resemble berries.  Each cone looks like a berry, but upon close examination one can see the faint lines of the soft scales that protect tiny seeds inside. 
     Some junipers are loaded with those decorative cones in autumn and through the succeeding winter.  Mice, squirrels, flocks of American robins and cedar waxwings, and groups of eastern bluebirds and yellow-rumped warblers, and individual northern mockingbirds are some of the creatures that eat many of those cones through fall and winter.  Those beautiful birds digest the pulp of the cones, but pass many of the seeds in their droppings, thereby spreading red junipers across the countryside when some of those seeds sprout.       
     Red junipers are also good cover for birds the year around.  Several kinds of birds, including dark-eyed juncos, mourning doves, robins, bluebirds, yellow-rumps, certain hawks and owls, and other species spend winter nights in the shelters of junipers.  And mourning doves, blue jays, gray catbirds, northern mockingbirds, northern cardinals, chipping sparrows, song sparrows and other kinds of small birds raise young in nests in junipers.
     Bradford pears are non-native, ornamental trees that are planted along streets and on lawns because of the multitudes of attractive white flowers they produce in April.  After being pollinated by wind and insects, the fertilized blooms produce small, brown fruits that are eaten by the critters listed above through fall and winter.  Again the birds digest the pulp, but pass many of the seeds over the landscape.  In that way the deciduous Bradford pear trees have escaped from captivity in great numbers and colonized acres of abandoned fields, pastures and roadsides.  And in October and November their glossy leaves turn bright red or maroon-red, making those deserted fields and so on quite attractive.  This type of pear tree, though an alien, is really quite striking and spectacular in autumn.  And it feeds a variety of wildlife.      
     Look for red junipers and Bradford pears in your home area.  They really are wonderful trees to experience through autumn and winter.

Three Beautiful Drakes

     Beautiful is not enough to describe these ocean ducks.  Drakes of three species of sea ducks are about the most striking of ducks in northern North America.  The colors and color patterns of those elegant drakes are fantastic, unbelievable.  Those colors serve to intimidate rival males of each kind during spring breeding seasons and attract females to the males for mating and reproduction.  Females of each kind, however, are plainer for camouflage while setting on eggs and raising ducklings through summer.     
     These attractive drakes are of long-tailed duck, harlequin duck and king eider duck species, which all winter in flocks on northern oceans, including the North Atlantic.  Use a field guide to birds of eastern North America to see their colors and patterns, and learn more details of their life styles.
     Long-tailed ducks nest on the Arctic tundra along the coast of the Arctic Ocean, including on Greenland and Iceland.  In winter, large flocks of them congregate mostly where ocean breakers roll to shore.  There they dive to the bottom to eat mollusks, crustaceans and small fish.  Drakes of this species are mostly white in winter, with dark chests, wings and cheeks which create lovely patterns, topped off with the two long, black tail feathers that give this species its name.  
     Harlequin ducks are a small species that nest along swift rivers and creeks in the northwestern United States, western Canada and most of Alaska.  They winter in little groups along rocky coasts of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, including rock jetties built to preserve the beaches of the North Atlantic.  They dive for mollusks and crustaceans in the choppy waters near those rocky shorelines.  Drake harlequins are handsome with red flanks and gray bodies with several white and black stripes and marks.
    But drake king eiders are the real dandies of these elegant sea ducks.  These large, stocky ocean birds have black bodies and wings, trimmed with a few white stripes and patches and buffy chests.  But their head feathers are magnificent.  They are pale-blue on top of the head and down the back of the neck.  Their cheeks are pale-green and they have light-orange knobs above red beaks.      
    King eiders nest on the Arctic tundra along the coast of the Arctic Ocean, including on Baffin Island of Canada and northern Greenland.  These majestic ducks form large rafts of themselves on the Atlantic Ocean through winter where they dive for crustaceans, mollusks and ocean worms on the bottom of the ocean.  Although sea ducks consume much the same kinds of foods, they do so in different niches which reduces competition among them for that food. 
     We can see these handsome ducks along the Atlantic Coast, if we look in the right places at the right times long enough.  But if we don't spot them, it's still neat to know they are there.

October is a Unique Month

     October is a unique month in Pennsylvania, and surrounding states.  There is no other time of year like it in this area.  It is the peak time of dying, colored deciduous leaves and other preparations for the coming winter.  October is the only month, locally, with so much beautiful leaf color, which is inspiring to many people, some of which go out of their way, including me, to see it.  That brilliant leaf color is particularly striking on crisp, sunny days with blue skies and cold wind out of the north.
     Pennsylvania looks like winter in November, December, January, February and March and like summer during May, June, July, August and September.  Leaves begin growing and the landscape turns green in April, but only October has an abundance of warmly-colored leaves.
     It's been said that Pennsylvania has more leaf color in October than any other place on Earth.  The right latitude, climate and soil combine for the best growth of deciduous trees, hence an overwhelming abundance of beautiful, inspiring colored foliage in October.
     Shortening daylight each succeeding day and cooler average temperatures in October prompt deciduous trees to shut off water to their leaves, which kills them.  As the leaves die, so does their green chlorophyll, allowing the other colors, that were always there, to be visible to us.
     But October is also the time of continuing south-bound migrations of the bird species that nested in Pennsylvania, including thrushes, flycatchers and warblers, and the return of birds that will spend the winter here, such as white-throated sparrows, white-crowned sparrows, dark-eyed juncos and yellow-bellied sapsuckers, for examples..  This is also the time of elk in Pennsylvania ending their rut while white-tailed deer are just beginning theirs.  Wood chucks and black bears are putting on layers of fat now while blue jays, eastern chipmunks and squirrels hide some of the abundance of nuts, grain and weed seeds in the soil or tree cavities to be eaten in winter.  
      Never is nature more beautiful or as bountiful as in October in Pennsylvania.  Most harvests are in by the end of the month, except some pumpkin and soybean fields.  Some fields of corn stalks are tied into many corn shocks in those fields where their pyramid shapes resemble Native American tepees.  There the corn will be stored through much of winter.  And there skunks, cottontail rabbits and other creatures will find shelter in the otherwise open fields.  Never are the wild and pretty nuts, seeds and berries so plentiful for a variety of wildlife to eat through winter, including black bears, deer, a variety of rodents and several kinds of birds, than during this lovely month.   
     Late in October and into early November, wind roaring through the trees and rain combine to knock deciduous leaves off the trees.  That foliage floats down on the wind like a storm of large, red and yellow snow flakes that pile on the ground like snow does, burying the soil and providing insulation and shelter for many kinds of small plants and animals.  When those leaves dry, they are crispy under foot.  And eventually those dead leaves decay, enriching the soil they fell on.  Now most of the deciduous trees are bare and the look of winter is upon the landscape.     
     October is a unique month in Pennsylvania.  It has beauties and intrigues all its own. 

Natural Spectacles in Southeastern Pennsylvania

     There are several spectacular natural happenings in highly-developed southeastern Pennsylvania in a year's time.  Each one is so overwhelming that it is easily seen or heard by most anybody who is outdoors.  And each one is inspirational and enjoyable to most people who experience them.
     Colored leaves in October are the single most spectacular natural happening in Pennsylvania.  It's been said that this state has the best display of autumn foliage in the world.  The state still has a lot of forests and its latitude and climate are right for colored foliage.  The beauty and abundance of autumn leaves reaches a climax here during the last week in October, a time when they are unbelievably beautiful and abundant.  Then deciduous woods are almost completely yellow and red, like nowhere else on Earth.
     When the amount of daylight each day becomes shorter and the average temperatures are cooler, deciduous trees shut off water to their leaves, allowing their death.  The plants' sensing shorter daylight and cooler temperatures is miraculous.  As the leaves die, the green chlorophyll in them also dies.  Then the other colors in the foliage are visible to us and we say the leaves have turned colors.
     Some of the most striking and inspiring autumn leaves in southeastern Pennsylvania are red ones on black gums, red maples, staghorn sumacs and Virginia creepers, orange ones on sugar maples, and orange, red and yellow ones on sassafras, poison ivy and sweet gums.  These colored leaves brighten woods, hedgerows, and suburban areas with their many trees.
     North-bound migrations of snow geese, tundra swans and Canada geese in February and March are exciting and inspirational to those people who experience those large, magnificent birds, including here in southeastern Pennsylvania.  A few, comparatively small flocks of each of those waterfowl species may winter here, but the great, constantly noisy hordes of geese and swans suddenly coming into this part of Pennsylvania are overwhelming to those folks who experience them.  Masses of bugling or whistling waterfowl can be spotted almost anywhere in the air, and on certain local impoundments where they rest and fields where they feed on waste corn and rye sprouts.  These majestic birds stay in southeastern Pennsylvania a few weeks, feeding, gaining strength and waiting for spring to catch up to their restless urges to go north to raise young.  And then, again almost overnight, they're gone from here and pushing farther north.
     Hundreds of male spring peeper frogs peep shrilly and hundreds of male American toads trill musically in the shallows of ponds and wetlands each warm evening through much of April here in southeastern Pennsylvania.  The wonderful, ancient calling of these two tailless amphibians brings their respective genders together for spawning, and are one of the first true signs of spring's arrival.  Being cold-blooded, these little creatures can not call in cold weather.  But when they are heard singing during warm evenings and nights in April, many a human soul experiences joy. 
     Soon after sunset each evening in July in southeastern Pennsylvania, innumerable male fireflies climb up stems of grass and other plants, take to the air and fly slowly while regularly flashing their cold, silent abdominal lights.  These fireflies, which really are beetles, create enchanted summer evenings with their millions and millions of charming blinking lights in woods, fields and lawns.  The beauty and intrigue of those lights are practically everywhere in abundance during the peak of the fireflies' breeding season in mid-July.
     The purpose of the male fireflies' flashing beacons is to get a glow of response from the flightless females still in the vegetation below.  When each male spots the glow of a female, he drops to her in the vegetation and they mate.   
     The ear-splitting, timeless chants of male true katydids overwhelm deciduous forests throughout Pennsylvania, at dusk and through much of each night from the end of July through to heavy frosts in October.  Each male has a file on one wing and a scraper on the other, which, when rubbed together, create the raspy, but charming,"Katy-did" sound.  Thousands of male katydids fiddling together in a woodland create a beautiful, wonderful chorus of chants.  Their seemingly endless chanting brings the genders of katydids together for mating before frost kills them.
     The lovely flowers of alfalfa and red clover in hay fields sometimes attract swarms of butterflies in late summer and through autumn.  Those attractive insects visit the blooms to sip nectar, and flying from blossom to blossom, create a shimmering show of many butterfly wings.  The most numerous butterflies in hay fields are cabbage whites, yellow sulphurs, monarchs, tiger swallowtails, silver-spotted skippers, buckeyes and spicebush swallowtails.  
     In spite of much human activity in southeastern Pennsylvania, there still is a lot of inspiring nature to experience here each year.  And it's that way throughout much of the world.  We only need to get out to experience some of natures' beauties and intrigues.    

Eye Shine

     One evening last week here in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, I was driving home along dark, lonely roads in local farmland.  Ahead I saw small lights blinking close to the ground on the side of the road I was driving on.  I slowed my car and aimed it toward those lights.  Suddenly, two raccoons shuffled quickly across the rural road and into a still-standing, sheltering corn field.  I knew they were coons by their posture and dark-ringed tails.  I drove by and continued on.  But it was a thrill to see those 'coons with my headlights.
     I have seen many mammals at night along streets and roads over the years.  And it's always a thrill to spot them no matter how many were noted before.  There is one vital clue to seeing mammals along the byways before you get to them-eye shine.
     Tiny lights along roads at night could be some kind of nocturnal mammal along the edges of those roads, including raccoons, red foxes opossums, striped skunks, white-tailed deer, cottontail rabbits or some other creature.  These are mammals most likely to be seen at night along roadways in Lancaster County through the year.  They are abundant species and adapted to farmland and suburban areas.  Some individuals of each kind are killed by vehicles on those roads because they are slow, blinded by head lights, young animals too innocent to know the dangers of traffic, or just haven't adapted to fast-moving vehicles.  It's always well to drive slowly when eye shine is spotted, for the safety of the animals, and motorists.
     These animals, young and older, are moving around under the cover of darkness in search of food or mates.  They wander over the black top when there is no traffic, but, suddenly, a vehicle rapidly comes upon them.  Often they have no time to react to the danger.  But these mammals along country roads and suburban streets indicate what kinds of them live in given areas and, perhaps, how abundantly.  Obviously, the more critters of a kind noted, probably the more common that species is.
     But for me, I enjoy seeing mammals' eye shine and the creatures themselves in the lights of my car.  I can acknowledge what species live in any given place and it's just exciting to spot them, often suddenly, "out of the blue".  One must always be ready when looking for mammals at night. 
     I have often gone out at night by vehicle with a million-candle spotlight in Lancaster County to look for nocturnal mammals.  What mammals are spotted depends on what habitat you're driving through.  All these critters are most likely noted along hedgerows between fields and along the edges of woodlands where they border cropland.  Those places have more food in them.  But these adaptable mammals could be in any local habitat. 
     Raccoons, 'possums and skunks that seem to bumble along can be surprisingly fast when they have to be.  Deer often seem unconcerned, continuing to feed when spotlights are on them.  Cottontails might sit still, relying on camouflage, or run for cover.
     It's surprising how many wild mammals can be spotted in vehicle headlights or in the beams of spotlights when they are sought at night in Lancaster County, as elsewhere.  And it is exciting when they are found going about their nightly business!  Watch for mammal eye shine as you drive along at night.  And let that shine be a warning of potential danger ahead.     
        
     
             

Critters Storing Food for Winter

     Several kinds of woodland animals in southeastern Pennsylvania store food in October to eat during lean times in the coming winter.  Blue jays, gray squirrels and eastern chipmunks are the most obvious of those hoarders in this area, but white-breasted nuthatches, two kinds of woodpeckers, tufted titmice and American crows do so as well.  All these creatures have adapted to older suburban areas with their many trees and shrubbery.  All of them, except some of the crows, are permanent residents in this area; meaning they don't migrate.  All of them, except the chipmunks, are active and abroad through winter when they search for the food they stored.  And all those critters that are active in winter must remember where they stashed their food savings for winter.  That is a critical part of the storing process that demonstrates the workings of there creatures' minds and memories. 
     Blue jays specialize in gathering pin oak acorns because those nuts are small enough for them to handle.  They pluck the acorns from the trees and off the ground in woods and suburban areas and fly away with them in their beaks to secret places, such as cavities in trees and holes they poke in the ground with their bills.  The jays' lovely, blue plumage is even more beautiful among the striking red, yellow and brown leaves of the pin oaks they fly into and out of.
     Gray squirrels, which are so abundant here, are obvious when picking up most any kind of nut they find in woods and suburbs and hiding them in tree hollows and holes they dig in the soil.  These squirrels store a lot of black walnuts.  But they chew off the husks before burying or storing them, which saves much space in the storage places.  Squirrels are about the only rodents that can handle black walnut shells and husks to get at the nutrition inside because only they have jaws strong enough and teeth sharp enough to do so.          
     Eastern chipmunks live in burrows in the ground on woodland floors and older suburbs with their many trees and shrubbery.  In October, each chipmunk gathers a variety of nuts, seeds and berries, stuffs them into two cheek pouches and hustle that food back to their homes in the ground.  They run down their tunnels to storage chambers where they unload their cheeks and zip out to get more edibles.  This they do much of each day through a good part of the month.  In November, they enter their sleeping room and sleep for several days at a time.  But several times through the winter they wake up, eat some of their stored food and go back to sleep.  What an enviable life they have in winter!  But they earned that rest through the rest of the year.    
     White-breasted nuthatches have also adapted to wooded suburbs.  They, too, store food, including seeds, corn kernels and small acorns, for the winter by pushing it into crevices in tree bark.  In winter they chip out that food when they need it.  Nuthatches are so adept on bark that they can easily walk down it headfirst.
     Red-bellied and red-headed woodpeckers also store nuts and seeds for the winter by chipping out holes in dead wood and bark and stuffing the food into them during autumn when those foods are abundant and available.  In lean times, they chisel out the food with their strong, sharp beaks.
     Tufted titmice, which are chickadee relatives, but a bit larger, also store seeds and small nuts for winter use during September and October.  They hide that food in tree hollows and under piles of leaves on forest floors and lawns.
     American crows are hoarders, too.  They stash most anything that passes for food in tree cavities and other sheltered places.       
     The storing of food is necessary for the survival of many kinds of wild animals through winter.  That storing probably is instinctive, but the animals that develop it survive.  And memories serve to develop brains into more complex organs that help wild critters' survive tough times. 

Big Birds in New Holland

     Late in the morning of October 24, 2015, I was sitting in our car in front of our house in New Holland, Pennsylvania waiting for my wife to come out.  I briefly glimpsed, through the windshield, a large bird flying behind a tree in our neighborhood.  When it came into view again a second later, I saw it was an adult bald eagle soaring up and up and away!  That eagle might have been a migrant that perched overnight in a large tree and was continuing its migration.  That eagle also reminded me of the bigger birds I have seen in this neighborhood over the last half-dozen years or a little more.        One of those large birds in our neighborhood was a great blue heron that ate the goldfish in our 100 acre, backyard fish pond.  I saw the heron fly low up the street one late afternoon early in March, circle our lawn and land in a tall Norway spruce tree in our back yard.  A neighbor saw the heron, too, and asked if I had seen the heron standing by our fish pond a few days earlier.  I said I didn't, but realized why our fish disappeared a few days ago.  That great blue caught and ate them!  Great blue herons are adaptable and it turns out many people lose goldfish to great blues.        
     A half-acre pond about a quarter mile from our home has had its share of water birds over the years, including mallard ducks and a score or more of majestic Canada geese off and on the year around for many years.  The geese often rest on the pond because they probably feel safer there.  But they fly, amid boisterous honking, to neighboring short-grass lawns, harvested corn fields and fields of winter rye to eat the vegetation there.  But when danger threatens, they fly back to the pond, amid much bugling.
     An immature tundra swan once spent November and the early part of December one winter on that pond.  Like the geese, it twice daily flew out to the same fields to feed on waste corn kernels and the green shoots of grass and rye.  And like the geese, this magnificent swan ran across the water while flapping its large wings to become airborne.    
     This grand-looking swan was hatched on the Arctic tundra and got separated from other tundra swans during its migration south for its first winter.  But it seemed to be healthy and probably joined a group of its kin that winter somewhere in Lancaster County.
     Sometimes, late in summer, a post-breeding great egret will stalk the shallows of this pond to catch small bluegill sunfish that form schools of themselves in the shallows away from bigger fish.  These elegant birds are four and a half feet tall, and white with black legs and a yellow bill, making a beautiful picture on the edge of the pond.
     New Holland also has at least three large, permanent resident birds of prey- red-tailed hawks, Cooper's hawks and great horned owls.  The magnificent red-tails hunt gray squirrels, mice and other creatures the year around.  In winter I see a few of them soaring majestically in to town from the fields and perch for the night in tall spruce trees where needles block the wind and cold to some extent.  Sometimes, one lands in a tree on our yard for the night, or to look for squirrels and other prey.
     At least one pair of Cooper's hawks has raised young in our neighborhood for several years.  And we see a lightning-fast Cooper's or two in winter picking off mourning doves, house sparrows and other kinds of birds.  We see the feathers falling to the ground as the Cooper's ingest their victims.
     We mostly hear a pair of great horned owls hooting to each other at dusk or sometime in the night. A couple of times I have seen one or two of them perched on top of one of our large spruces, silhouetted against the sky.  I see the owls better on cloudy nights when outdoor lights brighten the clouds, making the owls' silhouettes stand out more. 
     A pair of horned owls have a home base in a one-acre patch of pine woods that was planted many years ago a quarter mile from home on the east edge of New Holland.  I think these are the same owls we hear at home and they probably raise one or two young every year in a stick nursery in one of those pines in that planted stand.
     These large birds, and other species, can be spotted in towns and cities.  One just has to think of the possibilities and get out and look for wildlife near home.   
     

A Meeting of Land and Bay

     The tide was out and hundreds of laughing gulls, scores of ring-billed gulls and several each of herring and great black-backed gulls stood on the mud flats.  One might think those gulls were on flats near an ocean, but they were not.  They were at the mouth of the North East River at North East, Maryland early in the afternoon of October 22, 2015.  And scores of fish crows and American crows were on the flats with that assortment of gulls where North East River flows into Chesapeake Bay. 
     The North East River is one of the arms of the Chesapeake Bay reaching north and inland from that largest of estuaries in North America.  It is one of the places where the bay and inland habitats come together.  Large patches of phragmites, which is a kind of tall marsh grass, and deciduous woods with sycamore trees and red and silver maple trees grow along the river's shores. 
     The mouth of the North East River is one of the sheltered places just off the bay where flocks of ring-billed gulls, many of which are inland the year around, and congregations of the coastal-breeding laughing gulls intermingle in late summer and autumn, after nesting, to feed and rest before winter.  And this is also one of the places where inland American crows, coastal fish crows and the gulls meet after their breeding seasons.  It is a meeting of birds from the land and the bay.
     The fish crows and American crows never were quiet the two and a half hours I was in North East. Always restless, they flew from the flats to trees and back.  And, interestingly, I sometimes heard the "laughing cries" of the laughing gulls. 
     There were other kinds of water birds at the mouth of the North East River, including Canada geese, a few green-winged teal, at least two great blue herons, maybe three adult bald eagles, several double-crested cormorants and a few killdeer plovers.  A couple of pairs of ospreys nest here in summer, but they were farther south at the time of this writing. 
     There was much bird activity while I was there.  A laughing gull was carrying a tidbit of food and was chased by a few gulls and crows.  The geese left the water and landed on a large, short-grass lawn to feed on grass.  Something alarmed the teal and they buzzed off in rapid flight.  The herons stalked fish in the shallows, and were successful.  A pair of adult bald eagles played in the sky.  Maybe they are a mated pair.  Every time an eagle flew over the gathering of gulls and crows, many of those birds took flight in fear for their lives.  One eagle carried a fish from the bay to a tree to it its finny victim.  The cormorants were lined up on a half-submerged tree in the bay to rest and dry their feathers.  And the plovers walked about on the exposed mud and ate invertebrates from the surface of it.  But what was really interesting to me was none of the birds seemed afraid of fishing boats going in and out of the river, or any other human activity.  They must be used to human activities.  And all these birds are around inland bodies of water, including rivers, lakes and ponds.
     The mouth of the North East River is a meeting ground between inland habitat birds and Chesapeake Bay birds.  These are adaptable creatures that make use of more than one habitat.            

Red Maples and Sugar Maples

     At the time of this writing, October 21, 2015, red maples and sugar maples are at their peak of spectacular beauty in Pennsylvania.  Red maple leaves have turned red and the foliage on sugar maples is orange, brightening many woods and suburban areas here and elsewhere in North America.  The leaves of both these related species of trees started turning colors in September when the amount of daylight each succeeding day continued to get shorter than the day before and average temperatures lowered.  Those natural happenings cause trees to shut off water to their leaves, which causes the death of them and the green chlorophyll in them.  When the green fades, the other colors, that were always there, are obvious to us.
     Both these handsome species are common in their natural ranges.  Red maples are endemic to the eastern half of the united States from southern Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.  Sugar maples' range is the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada.  But today many trees of both species are planted on lawns because of the beauties of their striking autumn foliage and their elegant shapes when bare in winter. 
     Individuals of both species can become massive with magnificent trunks and limbs.  The bark of red maples, particularly younger ones, tends to be fairly smooth, while sugar maple bark is rough and tends to flare out in many places.  Wild red maples mostly inhabit bottom lands with moist soil, while sugar maples are most common in upland woods.
     Red maples are well-named because there is something red on them in every season through the year.  They have red seeds early in summer, red foliage in fall, red buds in winter and multitudes of red flowers early in April, which makes the whole canopy of bottom land woods red.  I like to hear male spring peepers shrilly peeping and the melodious trilling of male American toads in swamps during warm April evenings under a ceiling of red maple blossoms.       
     Red maples and sugar maples have winged seeds that grow in pairs.  Each seed has a thick part that houses the embryo and its stored food, and a thin wing.  Because of its wing, each seed can twirl on the wind away from the parent tree and hopefully land and sprout in a place away from the shade of other trees.  
     Older trees of both types of maples are riddled with cavities where wind ripped branches off the trees.  Without the protective bark, the wood in the wounds decays, creating hollows that squirrels, raccoons, certain kinds of small birds, certain hawks and owls and other critters can live in and raise young.
     And the clear sap of both these kinds of maples can be made into syrup and sugar.  Sugar maples have two percent of sugar in their watery sap while red maples and other types of maples have less than one percent.  Obviously, sugar maples are the best species to get maple syrup. 
     Look for the striking beauties of foliage on red and sugar maples at this time of year.  They are enjoyable and inspiring. 

A Community of Invertebrates

     Today, October 21, 2015, I visited a pond in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania from 12 noon to 1:00 PM.  I walked around a few minutes, but mostly sat on a concrete car stop between the black top parking lot and the short grass lawn by the pond.  At first, I didn't see much wildlife, except a few kinds of sparrows in a thicket, a pair of Canada geese feeding on under water algae and a few basking painted turtles.  But the car stop I was sitting on, the one on either side, and the edge of the lawn a couple of feet in front of me were bustling with invertebrate activity.  Sometimes a few species at once were visible.
     I first realized there were several invertebrates where I sat when I saw a differential grasshopper perched in the sunlight on the car stop next to mine, two black field crickets jumped along the edge of the grass in front of me, a jumping spider did a series of leaps on my car stop, and an orange-fuzzed acraea moth caterpillar crawled over the black top.  The crickets apparently live in the mat of mowed, dead grass and dead white pine needles under each car stop and occasionally come out to warm in the sunlight.  The caterpillar probably was looking for a sheltered place to spend the winter as the evenings are getting cooler now.  But the grasshopper was the most interesting insect.  It was a female that pushed the rear of her abdomen into the soft soil in several places on the edge of the lawn to deposit her eggs in that soil.      
     Now my curiosity was peaked and I watched for more insects from where I sat.  A half-banded toper dragonfly with its brown head and thorax and red abdomen landed on the car stop next to mine.  I could see its four wings were held flat and slightly forward as it rested.  This type of dragonfly is noted to fly and spawn late in October in this area.
     As I continued to watch for insects, a black ground beetle scurried from the protection of one car stop to another.  I thought that if I was a small bird or a shrew this is where I would be to catch food!
     A few each of cabbage white butterflies and yellow sulphur butterflies were on the small, white flowers of a kind of aster growing in a little clump on the edge of the lawn.  There they sip nectar.  And a monarch butterfly fluttered close by on its way to Mexico for the winter.  I hope he or she makes it.
     But in the end, it was the differential grasshoppers that stole the show.  I saw three females warming on the car stops, then spawning eggs.  Two laid eggs in the soft ground of the narrow strip between the edge of the lawn and the black top.  There the eggs probably will be protected through winter by the soil and dead grass piled on top of it.  But the third grasshopper laid her eggs in mats of dead grass and pine needles against and under the car stop next to the one I was sitting on.  I wondered if that was a good place.  If not, the embryos will die in winter's cold.  But if the young do hatch, the grasshoppers found a new place to spawn eggs, perhaps increasing their numbers.
     One can not predict where he or she will find nature's beauties and intrigues.  They are all around us and all we have to do is get out and look and listen for them, even in human-made structures.

Preps for Winter

     A gathering of yellow-rumber warblers fluttered and flashed everywhere among deciduous trees and shrubbery in a peninsula of woodland jutting from the equally wooded Welsh Mountains into Lancaster County, Pennsylvania farmland.  Those warblers were catching insects in the plants' foliage and from the air.  And each one had an obvious yellow rump and a yellow blotch on each flank. 
     I saw several kinds of birds and mammals in that woodland for about and hour and a half on a beautiful day in mid-October.  The mammals, including a gray squirrel, eastern chipmunk, cottontail rabbit and four buck white-tailed deer were, of course, permanent residents in that woods.  And some of the birds were residents of them, too, including a couple of female northern cardinals, a white-breasted nuthatch, two downy woodpeckers, a couple of Carolina chickadees and a blue jay.
     And there also were several kinds of recent migrants in that woodlot that afternoon.  They included the yellow-rumps, an eastern phoebe, two female eastern bluebirds and a few white-throated sparrows.
     But whether these critters were residents of that woods or not, many of them were active in  preparing for winter, creating much entertainment for me.  The jay and squirrel were storing nuts for use in winter when food may be scarce.  The jay was gathering acorns and flying off with them to store them in a tree cavity or a hole it poked in soft soil for each nut with its sturdy beak.  The squirrel specialized in black walnuts.  They are the only critters that can.  Squirrels are big enough and have teeth large and strong enough to chew through the outer husk and the inner shell to consume the nutrition within. 
     The chippie was a real worker.  While I was there he, or she, constantly ran, flat to the soil and among grass and fallen leaves, back and forth between his little den in the ground and the various food sources, such as acorns, grass seeds, berries and other, similar vegetation.  He'd fill his cheek pouches with food, run back to his burrow, empty his cheeks in an underground storage chamber and pop right out for another load.
     A downy woodpecker was chipping at dead wood on a limb to make a cavity for its winter home almost the whole time I was there.  Chips of wood dropped from its construction site.  Good thing woodpeckers have sharp bills and reinforced skulls of bone.  
     The nuthatch walked up-side-down on a large black walnut trunk and limb as it inspected crevices in the bark for invertebrates and their eggs.  Nuthatches feed in this way the year around and they are the only birds able to look for food in that way.
     The bluebirds, yellow-rumps, white-throats and phoebe already did much of their preparation for the coming winter by migrating as far as they did.  The phoebe probably will go farther south, but the other species may well stay in that woodlot all winter, as long as they can find berries and seeds to eat.   
     That peninsula of woods was full of interesting birds and mammals during the short time I visited it.  And many of those creatures were busily getting ready for winter while I watched them, making my time in the woods the more intriguing.  

       

Cruising the Ridges

     Some days in October of every year, southeastern Pennsylvania, as elsewhere, receives strong, northwest winds and cool temperatures as part of cold fronts, with their clear skies and cold winds, coming through the area.  Every time those winds roar, tearing red and golden leaves from their twig moorings and sweeping them along until they fall to the ground and form crunchy blankets, I am reminded that migrating bald eagles and a variety of hawks, most commonly sharp-shinned and red-tailed, will be following the northeast to southwest running Appalachian Mountains southwest.  Those diurnal raptors are heading south to avoid the northern winter that is "just around the corner".  And the wooded Appalachian Ridges enhance that migration south, with little energy expended on the raptors' parts.
     North and northwest winds get pushed up the northeast to southwest ridges from the pressure of the wind behind, pushing leaves, corn stubble from farmland below, and hawks up with them.  As the wind pushes those birds up, gravity constantly pulls them down.  But when the raptors set their powerful wings just right, they balance the wind and gravity to their advantage and soar above the ridges southwest, mile after mile with little effort.  Raptors need to conserve energy because their food of prey animals are not easy to capture.  
     Sharp-shinned hawks are a bit larger than blue jays and, mostly, power fliers, rapidly flapping their wings, then soaring, then flapping their wings again, alternately, through the day.  And that is the way they migrate along the ridges patterned with autumn leaves in October.  They zip rapidly along those wooded hill tops, alternately flapping and soaring, so quickly that, at first, you don't see them, then there they are in front of you for a second, then they're gone from sight to the rear. 
     Sharpies are exciting to see anytime, but especially on migration.  On some blustery, partly cloudy days of cold, northwest winds, they come down the ridges one right after another so abundantly and rapidly, like feathered rockets, that it is difficult to keep track of them all from the various mountaintop lookouts, particularly on the Blue Ridge or Kittitinny Mountains of Pennsylvania.  Sharp-shins are wild not only in name, but in reality.  They excite the human soul with their quick, powerful flights in wild, autumn skies.
     Red-tailed hawks, being larger than American crows, are majestic in soaring flight.  Migrating red-tails set their large, out-stretched wings on the north wind being pushed up the southwest running mountains and soar elegantly, hour after hour, with little beating of their wings, thereby saving a lot of valuable energy.
     Red-tails are fairly easy to spot in the sky because they are large, with their stately wings spread to their maximum.  And some windy days, especially toward the end of October, they come down the ridges almost one right after another in, almost, a steady parade.  The magnificent red-tails are inspiring to see above ridges of colored foliage under a stormy-looking sky.
     Cumulus clouds enhance the viewing of migrating raptors.  The birds stand out silhouetted, but more clearly, before the white, puffy clouds than they do against the blue sky.  But the various kinds of hawks and eagles can be identified by their shapes, sizes and the way they fly or soar.
     Other kinds of migrant raptors in October are just as inspiring to see as sharpies and red-tails.  Sharp-shins and red-tails just are seen more commonly moving down Appalachian Ridges during autumn. 
     If the reader gets the chance to and has not done so, get on a mountain look out such as Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Berks County, Pennsylvania or Wagoner's Gap along Route 74 between Cumberland County and Perry County, Pennsylvania.  Be there when the cold wind blows strongly from the north or northwest and the forest leaves are turning colors in October to see the wonderful, exciting hawk and eagle migrations.  They are inspiring.              

Turtle Divergence

     Turtles have lived on Earth before and after the dinosaurs.  They have survived long enough to spread into about every major environment on this planet, from deserts to oceans.  Their use of many different niches has resulted in many species of turtles that don't compete directly for space and food.
Some examples of this diverging into different niches can be observed here in eastern North America.  Interestingly, land turtles have humped-up shells while water turtles have flatter shells for slipping more easily through the water.  Being reptiles, all turtles are cold-blooded, and many of them hibernate through winter's cold.  And all turtles lay eggs on land.  Get a field guide to North American turtles to see the appearances of these turtles and read more about their life histories. 
     Tortoises have adapted to living in deserts and drier habitats in the United States, for example.  They dig burrows in sand, many of which are also used by many kinds of critters, including rattlesnakes, spiders, various insects, burrowing owls, rodents and many other species.  Tortoises mostly eat flowers and other vegetable matter they can reach from the ground.
     Box turtles are handsome land turtles that mostly live on woodland floors.  They burrow under piles of fallen leaves each evening in spring, summer and autumn and hibernate in the soil in winter.  They eat almost anything edible, from mushrooms to berries, invertebrates and carrion.
     Three turtles of the clemmys genus, wood turtles, spotted turtles and the rare bog turtles, dwell in a mix of land and shallow water habitats.  Wood turtles live and feed much the way box turtles do on forest floors, but with more of a tendency to enter woodland streams at times.  Spotted turtles live most of the time in shallow woodland brooks where they consume aquatic invertebrates.  And the diminutive bog turtles live in bogs of clumps of grass standing in shallow, still water.  There they also ingest invertebrates.     
     Painted, snapping and slider turtles all live commonly in the more shallow parts of ponds and lakes.  All these turtles are meat eaters when they are young, but snappers are strictly carnivorous all their lives.  All these turtles bask in the sunlight to warm up to have the energy to look for food and mates.  They hibernate in the muddy bottoms of impoundments through winter.  
     Map turtles and sliders inhabit fresh-water rivers.  Sliders dwell with painted turtles in ponds and live in smaller rivers with map turtles.  But map turtles also inhabit large rivers where they eat mollusks, crustaceans, insect larvae, small fish and other critters.  Map turtles also are devout baskers, sometimes piling on each other on mid-river boulders and fallen trees to soak up the warming sunshine.  
     Diamond-backed terrapins live in Chesapeake Bay, Delaware Bay and other brackish, back waters along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, uniquely the only turtles to do so in America.  They feed on mollusks and crustaceans they glean from the bottoms of brackish bodies of water.
     And there are a few kinds of ocean turtles that come close to North American shores.  They are the biggest turtles because the salt water supports their weight.  And they have large front flippers adapted for long distance swimming. 
     Turtles are an interesting example of related creatures diverging into different niches to take advantage of various food sources.  That diverging also creates different species, each of which is adapted to its niche without competition from its relatives.  Worldwide, there are, potentially, as many species of plants and animals as there are niches.
       
    

Wintering Sea Ducks

     Several kinds of ducks winter on the salt water of the western coast of the north Atlantic Ocean, along the shores of the United States and Canada.  Those ducks wintering in flocks in the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays, sounds, inlets off the ocean and on the ocean itself near the shores can often be seen from land with the aid of binoculars and scopes.  Those sea ducks include harlequin ducks, long-tailed ducks, common, white-winged and surf scoters, common and king eiders, and red-breasted mergansers.
     The drakes of all these duck species are attractive to intimidate other males of their respective kinds, and attract females of their species for mating and reproduction.  But the hens of all these species are plain, which blends them into their habitats while brooding eggs and raising ducklings.
     These ducks of big waters have legs toward the rears of their bodies for more efficient swimming, particularly underwater where their food is.  But they can barely walk on land and must run across long stretches of water while flapping their wings to get airborne.  All these duck species are tied to bigger bodies of brackish and salt water in winter and spend winter nights in the watery niches where they feed by day.  They are all well feathered to shed water and keep out the cold.
     These ducks mostly consume mollusks, especially blue mussels, small crustaceans and small fish.  One would think they would be in competition with each other for food, but they reduce rivalry for it by exploiting different niches in the oceans and their salty or brackish back waters.
     Male harlequin ducks are beautiful.  They are mostly gray, with rufous flanks and black and white markings among he gray.  Females are brown with white markings on each side of the head.  Harlequins generally winter in little groups along the shoreline surf close to boulders and rock jetties.  These small ducks mostly eat blue mussels and other mollusks, barnacles and crustaceans they scrape off under water rocks.   
     Both genders of long-tailed ducks are handsome in winter with their white and chocolate patterned feathering.  Drakes have long tail feathers, hence their common name.  Big wintering gatherings of this species feeds on mollusks and crustaceans in tidal rips and shallow shoals along the coast where breakers pound the beaches. 
     Flocks of common, white-winged and surf scoters ingest mollusks and crustaceans in deeper water beyond the breakers in bays, sounds and the ocean not far from shore.  Drakes of all these closely related species are mostly black, but male surf scoters have white markings on their heads.
     Large rafts of common and king eiders winter on the north Atlantic Ocean.  Drakes of both kinds are colorful while their mates are brown.  A field guide to American birds will illustrate the beauties of all these ducks.  Both eider species eat mollusks and crabs, the kings farther out in the ocean, which reduces competition between these cousins for the same food.  And both kinds spend cold winter nights bobbing on the ocean.
     Loose gatherings of red-breasted mergansers winter on estuaries and sounds where they feed on small fish and have thin, serrated beaks to catch their finny prey.  Both genders of this species have shaggy crests, which help in identifying them.       
     Though not always close enough to shore to be spotted and identified, sometimes these wintering sea ducks are, thrilling birders.  These ducks are tough and energetic in diving under water to get food through each winter.  And they do so in different niches, which reduces competition among them. 

Birds in an October Woodlot

     I sat on the edge of a thirty-acre, maturing woodlot of larger trees about a mile and a half south of New Holland, Pennsylvania for a couple hours in mid-October of this year to experience what birds were in it.  Yellow leaves fell from the trees, almost as steadily as a light snow.  And the foliage of poison ivy and Virginia creeper vines, that had climbed large trees along a bordering country road, was red, further giving me a feeling of autumn.  The berries on those poison ivy and creeper vines, and on a few Tartarian honeysuckle bushes in the woods, will feed birds and rodents through winter. 
     The first birds I saw in that little patch of woods was a small flock of American robins and a few blue jays that were drinking and bathing in the shallows of a brook flowing gently through the woodland.  Though common species, the robins and jays were still attractive, and neat to see splashing in the water.
      Both species are done nesting and the robins are gathering into groups, some of which will fly farther south for the winter while others stay in this area through winter and eat berries every day, the only food that usually is available to them in winter.  The robins in those woods probably will consume the berries already mentioned in this article, plus those on spice bushes deeper in this bottomland woods. 
     Each winter evening, the robins that stay north will huddle together in shrubbery and young coniferous trees where they will spend the night.  There they will be relatively safe from predators and the weather.  
     When they aren't bathing in shallow water, the local blue jays are now busily gathering small acorns, like those from pin oaks, and storing them in crevices in tree bark and in the ground.  They push those nuts in hiding places with their sturdy beaks and pull them out of hiding when food is scarce in winter.  The jays' beautiful blue feathering is particularly lovely when flashing through the warmly-colored leaves of the oaks during October.
     I saw four species of woodpeckers, hairy, downy and red-bellied woodpeckers, and northern flickers, in this patch of tall trees while I visited it for a couple hours.  All but the flickers are permanent residents in that woodlot; most flickers are migratory.  All those woodpeckers were either searching for invertebrates in dead wood on the trees, eating berries, or flying about in search of food or seeing what the neighbors were doing.
     Downy and red-bellied woodpeckers are often seen around this area because they are adaptable and common in local woodlands, fields with a few trees in them, and older suburban areas with their many maturing trees. 
     Woodpeckers have handsome feathering and a few specialized body parts that help them with their way of life.  They have stiff tail feathers that prop them up against tree trunks as they chip into them for invertebrates.  They have two toes in front of each foot and two in back to prop them better on tree trunks.  They have sharp beaks for chiseling into wood.  And woodpeckers have sticky, exceptionally long tongues for running into insect tunnels when they chisel into them.  The invertebrates adhere to the woodpeckers' tongues, which the birds pull out of the burrows loaded with tiny critters that they swallow.
     As in most any patch of woods or wooded suburb, locally, a small, mixed group of Carolina chickadees and tufted titmice roamed through the woods looking for insects and their eggs.  Always on the move and, seemingly, cheerful, these little, related birds are always a delight to experience.  These species are permanent residents, also, and will be in these woods through each year.
     A song sparrow and a family of northern cardinals are a couple other kinds of resident birds I saw on the edge of those woods during the couple of hours I was in them in October.  The song sparrow was scratching in the soil for seeds, as his kind will do.  The cardinals were mostly flitting about, probably not liking my presence in the woods.  I knew they were a family because one was bright red all over, the mature male, and another was mostly brown with red feathers in the wings and tail, and had a pink beak, the adult female.  But a third cardinal had brown feathering with a bit of red on its wings and tail.  But this one had a dark bill, a youngster hatched late this past summer.  These cardinals, like the song sparrow, will eat seeds and berries here through winter.
     Several kinds of birds can be spotted almost anywhere, most any time.  We only need to get and look for them in interesting habitats.        
    

Fall Thickets

     Thickets of shrubbery, vines and young trees in hedgerows between fields and woodland edges in the croplands of the mid-Atlantic States have many beauties in October and November, and through the coming winter.  Those beauties include colored leaves, flowers, berries and various kinds of animals.
     Thickets of bushes and vines grow dense because they receive ample sunlight each sunny day.  And they provide abundant food and shelter for a variety of farmland wildlife through the year, which helps make those thickets more interesting.
     Some of the most striking fall foliage in thickets is on poison ivy and Virginia creeper vines, pokeweed, and staghorn sumac and sassafras trees.  Those leaves brighten the thickets like no other vegetation can.  Poison ivy and sassafras have red, yellow and orange foliage in October, while the other plants have red leaves.
     Goldenrods with their tiny, yellow flowers and asters with white or pale-lavender blooms continue to blossom into October.  Those lovely flowers are the last major source of nectar for a variety of insects, including bumble bees and pearl crescent butterflies.
     Several kinds of plants in thickets present brightly colored, pretty berries in October and through winter.  They include Virginia creepers, poke and grape with their deep-purple fruits, multi-flora rose bushes and staghorn sumacs that have red berries, tear-thumb vines with their pale-blue berries and crab apple trees that have red or yellow fruits, depending on the kind of tree.  Some of those fruits are brightly colored so birds can find them to eat them.
     Berries and fruit in thickets in this area provide abundant food for several kinds of birds and mammals wintering in those human-made habitats.  Mammals that consume various kinds of fruit in fall and winter in this area include a variety of rodents, foxes, coyotes, raccoons, opossums, skunks, white-tailed deer, black bears and others.  Birds that ingest them include northern mockingbirds, American robins, eastern bluebirds, cedar waxwings, starlings and several other species.  Those lovely birds eat the berries, digest the pulp, but pass the seeds in their droppings as they travel across the landscape.  Thus, many kinds of plants are spread over the countryside.
     Permanent resident song sparrows and northern cardinals and wintering white-throated sparrows, fox sparrows and dark-eyed juncos eat weed and grass seeds in thickets.  These small birds also add interest and beauty to those habitats in autumn and winter.
     Resident Carolina chickadees, tufted titmice, white-breasted nuthatches, blue jays, downy and red-bellied woodpeckers, and Carolina wrens and wintering golden-crowned kinglets and yellow-rumped warblers also winter in deciduous thickets, as they do in woods.  There they consume hibernating invertebrates and their eggs hidden away in bark crevices and dead wood.
     Cottontail rabbits, wood chucks, gray squirrels and white-footed mice are vegetarian mammals that live in thickets.  Chucks dig burrows in the ground to live in, and hibernate through winter.  Abandoned chuck holes, however, are good homes for rabbits, red foxes, coyotes, skunks, opossums and other types of mammals that live in hedgerows and woodland edges.
     Thickets in hedgerows and woodland edges harbor many kinds of lovely and adaptable plants and animals during fall and winter.  Get out sometime to experience thickets of shrubs, vines and young trees in your neighborhood. 

Spot-Breasted Thrushes

     The six species of spot-breasted thrushes of eastern and northern North America, including gray-cheeked, Bicknell's, Swainson's and hermit thrushes, veeries and wood thrushes appear to be closely related.  All these thrush species are basically brown on top, which blends them into their forest floor homes, are American robin-shaped and average seven inches long.  Robins are thrushes, too, by the way. 
     Each kind of spot-breasted thrush has a dark, drooping "moustache" on each side of its face under its beak and dark spots scattered across its light-colored chest.  All of them have flute-like songs, nest in North American forests and winter in Central America and South America, where their common ancestor probably originated.  And all of them eat invertebrates they find on forest floors.  Only minor, probably recently-developed, differences separate them into distinct kinds.  Look for these thrushes in a field guide to American birds to see their similarities and differences.
     When their original ancestor raised young in different forest niches to have nesting room with less competition with their relatives for space and food, diverse kinds of thrushes, with slight changes in their appearances, developed from genetic quirks that were passed along to their descendants in isolated populations.  Over many years, the populations of each isolated group grew and became new species.  But most of the characteristics of these species today are still shared with each other.
     Gray-cheeked thrushes nest in coniferous forests across northern Canada and most of Alaska, and winter in South America.  This species is olive-gray on top and has gray cheeks.  The males' breezy songs roll down, but abruptly rise at the end.
     Bicknell's thrushes breed in the forested mountains of the Maritime Provinces, Catskill Mountains, Adironack Mountains and the wooded mountains of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.  This species winters in the West Indies.  And since they are very closely related to gray-cheeked thrushes, Bicknell's thrushes are almost identical to gray-cheeks and the songs of males of both kinds are similar.  The best way to distinguish these two types of thrushes is to note where they nest.
     Swainson's thrushes rear young in spruce forests across Canada and Alaska and in the northern Rocky Mountains of the United States.  They winter in Central and South America.  This olive-brown kind of thrush has a buffy face and a light ring around each eye.  Males' songs slide up the scale.
     Hermit thrushes hatch offspring in mixed coniferous/deciduous woods across Canada and southern Alaska, and on the Rocky Mountains.  They spend the northern winter in the southern half of the United Sates and Mexico, the only spot-breasted thrush to do so.
     Hermit thrushes have rusty tails, rather than the gray-brown tails of some of their relatives.  And they constantly pump their tails slowly up and down.
     Veeries raise youngsters on the leafy floors of damp, bottomland, deciduous woods in southern Canada, northern United States and the American Rockies.  They winter in Central and northern South America.  This species is completely rusty-brown above and has the least amount of spotting on its chest.  Males' breezy songs spiral down.
     Wood thrushes raise young in robin-like nurseries in shrubbery in deciduous woods in the eastern half of the United States.  Some wood thrush pairs hatch young in mature suburban areas with their many trees and shrubbery.  This type of thrush winters in Mexico and Central America.  The males' flute-like songs seem to say "a-o-lee" or "e-o lay".  This type of thrush has rusty heads and shoulders and the heaviest spotting on their chests of all their close relatives.
     Look for these six thrush species in summer when they are nesting in North America.  Or look them up in a field guide.  They are near look-alikes, which demonstrates their common ancestry not so long ago.    
     

Staghorn Sumac in October

     One clear, windy morning in October several years ago, I was walking through an abandoned field of white aster flowers, goldenrod blooms, tall grasses, milkweed pods expelling their silky, white fluff, and red banners (compound leaves) of staghorn sumac trees fluttering vigorously in the wind.  Each compound leaf has several leaflets lined up on both sides of the main leaf vein.  I suppose that was my first real noticing of sumacs because I, obviously, never forgot any bit of that cold, sunny morning.
     Staghorn sumacs are small, native trees that pioneer land that was denuded by fire or agriculture, here in the Mid-Atlantic States, and in much of eastern United States.  They grow mostly in human-made habitats; along country roadsides, on land that was cultivated and then deserted, and in hedgerows of trees, shrubs, vines and other plants growing between fields.   
     Sumacs usually are either ignored or disliked by most people who don't realize the beauties and values of these trees that generally don't get taller than twelve feet.  Those people consider them to be weed trees, nuisances to be disposed of.  But some folks marvel at, and enjoy, the enlightening beauties of this common tree in so-called waste areas, places we created. 
     Staghorn sumac trees have two main beauties by early October- their red foliage and their red, fuzzy berries.  Sumac's red leaves brighten roadsides and abandoned fields, even on gloomy days.  They bring beauty to places that, otherwise, would have little of it.
     And the berries of staghorn sumacs, arranged in pyramid-shaped clusters on top of the twigs, are not only pretty to see, but beneficial to wildlife as well.  Rodents and small birds, including American robins, eastern bluebirds, cedar waxwings, northern mockingbirds and other species, eat those red, furry berries through autumn and winter.  The birds easily see the brightly colored berries, consume many of them, digest their pulp, but pass many sumac seeds in their droppings as they fly from place to place.  Some of those seeds sprout the next spring.  Sumacs, in that way, are spread across the countryside.  Wildlife gets food in winter and the trees' seeds get free passage to new places on the landscape, where they could sprout and grow, if conditions are right for the young plants.
     Staghorn sumac trees are pretty to see in October, and beneficial to wildlife through winter.  They may be small and weedy-looking, but they are a win-win plant.        

Lovely Natural Scenes

     Twice in the past week I have been to natural places that were small in the numbers of wildlife, but big in their beauty, as if paintings of nature.  I visited each site for only a couple of hours, but came away enriched with their beauties, in spite of their both being filled with human activities.
     The first spot was seen on October 1, 2015, from a pavilion in Washington Boro, a little town along the Susquehanna River in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  I was in the pavilion because a steady rain was falling.
     This part of the river, among wooded, alluvial islands, is shallow, with some mud flats and a few half-submerged, fallen trees protruding from the water.  A majestic, adult female bald eagle perched handsomely on a log in the river that, from my viewpoint, was beautifully, centrally framed by crack willows, staghorn sumacs and other kinds of trees that were beginning to have warmly-colored foliage.  A dozen, or more, migrant tree swallows zipped back and forth across the sky and over the eagle at tree top level as they caught flying insects.  Those swallows were at the top of the painting.   
     A lesser yellowlegs, which is a kind of long-legged sandpiper, waded in the shallows near the eagle to snare invertebrates from the water and mud, while a black duck swam by the yellowlegs.  .And eight double-crested cormorants rested on another dead tree lying in the shallow water, within the framework of trees.  But after a little while, they began fishing again. 
     Bald eagles and cormorants are all catchers of fish, but do so in different ways.  Bald eagles drop from the air to snare large fish in the talons of their feet.  Cormorants dive under water from the surface to catch fish smaller than the eagles take.
     The other picture of natural beauty I enjoyed was at Blue Marsh Lake State Park near Reading, Pennsylvania on October 8, 2015.  The day was sunny, but cool, with many puffy-white, cumulus clouds in a blue sky.  I was among young red juniper, black walnut, white ash, red maple and silver maple trees in a small picnic area cleared of shrubbery and vines.  But that patch of open woods was surrounded by thickets of bushes, vines and young trees on two sides.  A gravelly shore six feet deep was in front of me, just off the woods, as was the large impoundment that reflected the blue sky.  And because I was on the edge of trees, much of the sky was visible to me.  Woods, that had some colored leaves, lined the shores a quarter mile across the lake, adding greatly to this beautiful natural scene.  The scene reminded me of Thoreau's cottage in the woods or a Native American camp by a lake in a woodland.  Motor boats speeding on the lake were the only thing that marred the peace of this place.
     The central focus of this painting by a lake was a great blue heron flying powerfully and swiftly low over the water as it chased two other great blues away from its stretch of shoreline where it hunts fish in the shallows, and two spotted sandpipers dancing along the shore in their searches for invertebrates to eat.  Great blues stand nearly five feet tall and I saw a couple of these large herons wading out from a distant gravelly shore to snare fish.  Spotties dance and bob along shorelines to mimic debris bouncing in the water, which is a kind of blending in to be invisible.  I also saw a belted kingfisher fly through my imagined frame of young trees and three ring-billed gulls floating on the lake.  Kingfishers dive beak-first into the water to catch small fish.  Those gulls are the first of the thousands that will roost on a distant shore of this lake through winter.
     I saw several turkey vultures and a red-tailed hawk occasionally soaring in the upper frame called the sky.  They were particularly easy to see before the cumulus clouds.  Several American crows also traversed the sky now and again and a couple of them harassed the airborne red-tail.
     I saw a blue jay, a yellow-rumped warbler and a downy woodpecker in the nearby thickets that framed my observation post on two sides.  The yellow-rump was catching flying insects in mid-air while the downy chipped into a small, dead tree after invertebrates.
     Several black and yellow bumble bees visited tiny, white aster flowers on the edges of the thickets to sip nectar and pollen from them.  The golden nectar "baskets" on the back legs of the bees were neat to see.  And Chinese stink bugs were everywhere, flying about in the woods and thickets.            
     These two areas were beautiful when I visited them, as if they were beautiful paintings done by a skillful artist.  And, actually, they were!  I could again see the Hand of God everywhere I looked.      
     
         
    

Pokeweed in October

     Pokeweed is a native, perennial plant here in Pennsylvania and across much of the eastern United States.  And they are most beautiful in October when they decorate the habitats they grow in with their stems, berries and leaves.
     Pokeweeds sprout from their roots in May in sunny habitats, including rural roadsides, abandoned fields and meadows, woodland edges and hedgerows between fields.  They can be up to eight feet tall in a few months and bushy with several branch-like stems.  They produce tiny, white flowers on the ends of their stems, which, when pollinated by tiny insects, produce green berries.  Those berries grow and become deep-purple with red juice by the end of summer.
     By October, pokeweeds are their most beautiful of any other time of the year.  Each plant has red stems, bright red leaves and many clusters of dark berries protruding along drooping, red stems.  Their red leaves are particularly attractive when sunlight shines through them, making them glow. 
     In October, the beautiful poke plants rival the beauties of goldenrod and aster flowers, the pale-blue berries of tearthumb and red hips of rose bushes, and the warm colors of autumn leaves, all of which are in the same habitats as the pokeweeds.    
     Like all fruits, to nature, those of poke are meant only for reproduction.  Poke seeds develop inside pokeweed fruits until mature.  Northern mockingbirds, northern cardinals, American robins, cedar waxwings, mourning doves and other kinds of medium-sized birds eat pokweed berries, digest their juicy pulp, but pass many of the seeds in their droppings as they travel across the countryside.  The next spring many poke shoots sprout where there had been none before.
     Mice, skunks, raccoons, foxes and other kinds of mammals also eat poke berries.  Many poke seeds pass through their digestive tracts, too, spreading the species across the landscape.
     During winter, pokeweed plants die, except for their seeds and roots.  But next May, there they are again, green and growing.
     This October, or succeeding ones, when traveling through farmland, watch for the beauties of pokeweeds, and the birds and mammals that consume their fruits.  Poke in its natural habitats in fall is just as lovely as colored foliage, flowers and berries.        
     

Beautiful Weather and Lovely Ground

     Today, October 6, 2015, was a rare one in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  It was perfect weather- just warm enough to be pleasant, with a cool breeze and low humidity.  The sky was blue with several puffy, white cumulus clouds.  And there was a feeling of "fall in he air".
     I took a two-hour drive this afternoon through the Twin Valleys of eastern Lancaster County today, to experience nature in them, as I have often done in the past.  That part of the county is called that because there are two broad, shallow valleys running parallel to each other from Blue Ball east about seven miles to Morgantown in Berks County, Pennsylvania.  The northern valley is bordered on the north by the wooded Furnace Hills and a long, low hill on its southern edge, which has Route 23 on it.  The southern valley is bordered on the north by that same long hill and on the south by the wooded Welsh Mountains.  Those two valleys are almost completely farmland with two small villages along Route 23.  There are several overgrown meadows with wild flowers still blooming, patches of deciduous woods, several each of farm ponds and streams, and the upper reaches of the Conestoga River.  The Conestoga here, however, is not much larger than a good-sized creek.
      Some of the flowers still blooming along the roads and in the overgrown pastures were asters with pale-lavender blooms, asters with small, white blossoms, goldenrods, chicory that have blue flowers and smartweeds with pink blooms.  Those flowers will continue blooming through much of October, adding beauty to cropland.
     Farmers were cutting alfalfa to make hay today.  Many of the corn fields have already been harvested, leaving only stubble behind.  Some of those harvested corn fields already have green rows of winter rye growing in them for a ground cover and to enrich the soil.
     Soybeans fields have not been harvested yet and many of them are also grown tall with the red stems and leaves of red root and lamb's quarters.  Foxtail grass is yellow in those same fields.  And all those pretty weeds and grasses are loaded with tiny seeds that will feed field voles and small birds through fall, winter and into early spring.
     I also saw the red stems and leaves of pokeweed and the fluffy parachutes of milkweed along some roadsides and in certain abandoned fields.  Many pokeweeds were also hanging heavy with clusters of deep-purple, juicy droops, while each milkweed fluff carried its cargo of a brown seed on the wind.  Though interesting and decorative to us, the berries and seeds will feed wildlife through the coming winter.
     Also indicating that autumn is here, poison ivy vines had vivid orange and yellow leaves on them while Virginia creeper vines had strikingly red foliage.  Meanwhile, black walnut, hickory and oak trees were shedding nuts, some of which were being gathered and stored by gray squirrels as part of their winter food supplies.
     I saw a red clover field still blooming with many pink red clover flowers.  And there still were many cabbage white and yellow sulphur butterflies fluttering from bloom to bloom to sip nectar.  And, surprisingly to me, there were a couple of migrant monarch butterflies stopping to take nourishment from the clover blossoms before continuing their migration to certain forested mountains in Mexico to pass the northern winter in relative warmth.  
     I saw a wood chuck and some birds that afternoon in the Twin Valleys.  Several turkey vultures circled in the sky without a single wing beat as they sniffed the air for carrion to eat.  A red-tailed hawk soared without effort as it watched for rodents to catch and eat.  Two American kestrels were perched on roadside wires as they watched the roadsides for grasshoppers and field mice.  A great blue heron flew powerfully and majestically across the sky, probably going from one fishing spot to another.  I also saw a few eastern bluebirds perched on fence wires as they searched the  low vegetation for invertebrates to eat.  And a small flock of migrant tree swallows careened swiftly over a recently mowed hay field to snap up flying insects in mid-air.  
     And as I drove from stop to stop in the farmland, I noticed a few each of furry caterpillars and grasshoppers crossing the road from one grassy roadside to the other.  I tried to avoid hitting them as I drove slowly drove by them.   
     This afternoon was lovely with much beauty to experience.  I saw the Hand of God everywhere I looked.      

Migrant Shorebirds in a Bare-ground Field

     In the afternoon of October 2, 2015, I drove to a few places in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania cropland in search of migrant shorebirds in partly-flooded fields and pastures.  We had a couple days of rain and I knew from past experience what low-lying fields and meadows would collect water into puddles.  Most of the places I visited were not at all inundated, but one bare-ground field, a harvested corn field, had pools in it.  I knew, without looking, shorebirds would be in that field to rest and eat invertebrates emerging from the saturated soil to avoid drowning.  I stopped and saw no birds at all with my own eyes.  But with the aid of my16 power binoculars, there they were!  There was a small variety of shorebirds in that partly-flooded field!  All those brown or gray shorebirds were so well camouflaged on the bare ground that I would not be able to see any until they moved, flew or were noticed through binoculars.  That camouflage protects them well against hawks and other predators.
     I estimated over a hundred killdeer plovers on the mud and around the pools in that field.  Some of them probably were local birds that nested in Lancaster County, but others were migrants.  All of them were in that bare-soil habitat to eat earthworms and other kinds of invertebrates emerging from the ground to avoid drowning.  That gathering of killdeer, spread loosely across the field, probably attracted the other species of shorebirds to that human-made habitat.
     By scanning my field glasses across the field, I counted six black-bellied plovers, which are light-gray on top, and six American golden plovers.  And I saw several pectoral sandpipers and a few least sandpipers.  All the other kinds of shorebirds here were mostly brown on top.  And all species were either standing at rest facing into the wind or walking about and pulling invertebrates from the soggy soil. 
     Interestingly, the black-bellied plovers were the largest of these shorebirds, followed by the golden plovers, killdeer, pectorals and least sandpipers, in that order of size.  But they were all equal in importance as migrants that rested and fed in a built habitat here in civilized Lancaster County before continuing their migrations south to avoid the northern winter.
     All these species, except the killdeer, raised young on the treeless Arctic tundra in summer when the sun never "sets" that far north.  And all these species, including the killdeer, are adapted to open country, including prairies, cow pastures, mud flats, beaches and bare-ground fields.
     The black-bellied plovers were the most unusual migrants in that field.  They either don't come through this county much on north-bound or south-bound migration, or we just don't often see them because they land temporarily in local places that few people think to look for birds.
     Those five kinds of shorebirds were interesting on that field of bare soil and corn stubble while they were here.  Only a few of the killdeer might stay through winter in this county, but they were all exciting, and brought a bit of the wild to civilized Lancaster County.   

Empidonax Flycatchers

     Empidonax flycatchers are a genus of small birds in the flycatcher family that fascinate me because they demonstrate well a divergence of several species from a single species.  Flycatchers are a family of birds that catch flying insects in mid-air and nest in North America, but winter in Central and South America where flying insects are available year around.   
     There are five kinds of flycatchers in the Empidonax genus, and they are all nearly identical in appearance, making them almost impossible to identify, except by song and nesting habitats.  They are all four and a half to four and three quarters inches long and olive-gray.  Each kind has two white wing bars on each wing and a white ring around each eye.  All species jerk their tails up and down when perched on twigs.  The songs of the males of all species are short, simple and somewhat similar.  And their nests, that hang below forks of twigs, are built similarly.  With all those characteristics in common, one would have to think these five types of flycatchers had a common ancestor in the recent past. 
     By exploiting five different habitats in North America for nesting sites and food, the original species diverged into five.  Those five kinds of flycatchers don't have to compete for nesting sites or food because there is one type per niche.
     Though the original Empidonax species diverged into five, all its descendants kept the camouflaged plumage of the original, which blends and hides them among leafy trees and shrubbery to escape the notice of predators.  But the simple song of each kind became a bit different than its close relatives because of geographic isolation, allowing the genders of each species to find each other among their relatives on migration and where habitats overlap.        
     Acadian flycatchers raise young along streams in deciduous floodplain woods in the southeastern United States north to  the latitude of Pennsylvania.  Their cradles often are on twigs that hang over the water of woodland streams.  Males' songs are a sneezed "pete-sa". 
     Least flycatchers nest among scrub trees and woods margins across Canada and in northern New England.  There song is a quick, dry "cha-beck".
     Willow flycatchers rear offspring in dry thickets, including in large patches of multiflora rose bushes, across much of the United States.  Male of this species sing a nasal, scratchy "fitz-bu".
     Alder flycatchers hatch youngsters in alder bush swamps across southern Canada and the northern United States.  Males sing "fee-bee-o".
     And yellow-bellied flycatchers nest in spruce-fir forests across Canada and in northern New England.  Males of this species sing a whistled, ascending "per-wee" or a dull "che-bunk".  This species also has yellow underparts, as their name implies.
     Notice that all songs of these little birds are simple and almost all of them have two syllables, again showing their close relationship.  They probably only recently diverged from a common ancestor to exploit different niches, thus spreading the original kind into other habitats, which might allow it longer life as a genus.  If one or two branches of the original species dies out, perhaps other branches will continue to live. 
     Many families of animals spread into different niches, thus not "putting all their eggs in one basket" if disaster strikes.  By one species spreading into different niches and becoming several kinds, the original species may prolong its tenure on Earth.