Sunny Summer Evenings

     Nothing in southeastern Pennsylvania is more beautiful and enchanting than sunny summer evenings.  They are the prettiest time of the year.  Green trees, shrubbery, grass and crops are bathed in life-giving, cheering sunlight.  All that lovely greenery is under strikingly blue skies, fluffed with light-gray and white, cumulus clouds.  All this is welcome, relaxing and enjoyable to many people.  And I feel I am in the midst of God when in pretty, peaceful rural areas, soaked in golden sunshine, during sunny summer evenings. 
     I drove through the woods and fields of eastern Lancaster County and northern Chester County, Pennsylvania on the evening of June 27, 2017, as I have many times in the past, to enjoy the sun-filled scenery and whatever wildlife that might be visible.  Groups of peacefully-grazing cattle, horses, sheep and goats dotted many of the meadows.  And some farmers were harvesting grain and baling straw.
     I saw some wildlife as I drove along that evening, including two doe white-tailed deer in their chestnut, summer coats, a couple of wood chucks grazing on grass and other vegetation, a family of eastern bluebirds perched on fence railings and a broad-winged hawk in flight over the road I was on.  And I saw several barn swallows zipping over fields after flying insects to eat and feed to their young perched, here and there, on roadside wires.  
     I stopped along a country road to look at Great Marsh damply sprawled in the distance.  With 16 power binoculars, I saw several kinds of wetland plants, including crack willows, phragmites, cattails, rushes, reed canary-grass, pickerel weeds with their many purple flowers, and bull lilies.  Several male and female red-winged blackbirds, that are raising young in that marsh, flew from tall plant to tall plant.  The males were spectacular with their red shoulder patches in contrast with their overall black feathering.  Female red-wings are attractive, too, in their more camouflaged way.  
     A little later, I stopped at a pond close to another rural road and stayed in my car so as to not frighten any creatures into hiding.  Stands of tall cattails lined the pond here and there and male and female red-wings swayed on some of them.  A great blue heron was perched on a limb of a large tree near the pond, probably resting and digesting after a meal of fish and frogs.  Within a couple of minutes of my stopping by this pond, I heard the explosive belching and gulping of several green frogs and the low moaning of a few bull frogs.  These frogs were sitting unseen here and there on the shores of the pond as they tuned up for a night's drawing of females of their respective kinds to the water to court and spawn.  And while I was listening to that ancient, primeval frog chorus, I saw the head of a painted turtle poked above the surface and a northern water snake swimming along one shore of the pond.
     Later still, as I was driving home just before sunset, I happened upon a scattered flock of a few dozen purple martins, which are a kind of swallow, sweeping and swooping low over a few fields to catch flying insects.  Those martins, as usual, were entertaining to watch, particularly before the setting sun.
     When I got home soon after sunset, male fireflies were climbing up short-grass stems, flashing their abdominal lights and launching themselves into the air, still flickering their lanterns.  These fireflies will repeat their intriguing, entertaining performances evening after evening until around the third week in July.  The use of those insect lanterns will bring the genders together for mating.
     While fireflies were rising from the grass, a few bats performed aerial ballets in the darkening sky over our neighborhood.  The bats fluttered and dove, turning this way and that, in their hot pursuit of flying insects to catch and ingest.  Interestingly, the bats hear the squeaks they constantly emit bouncing off flying insects with their built-in sonar, giving the bats a mental picture of where the insects are.
     No time of year is more beautiful or enchanting than sunny summer evenings in the country.  If the reader needs times of peace, comfort and solace, try enjoying summer evenings, and any other part of nature, any time of the year.  Nature heals.  
                          

The Heath Family

     I never saw so many attractive wild pinxter azalea flowers in full bloom as I did on May 5, 2017 in the wooded Welsh Mountains of eastern Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  Some of the two to eight foot tall, but spindly, pinxter shrubs had lovely, pale-pink blossoms while others had beautiful, deeper-pink blooms.  A few carpenter bees were visiting the pinxter blossoms to sip nectar while I was there.  Seeing those pinxter blossoms made me think of other shrubs in the heath family I have seen over many years.
     Pinxter azaleas are deciduous shrubs in oak woodlands in the eastern united States, including woods in southeastern Pennsylvania.  They flourish best in rich, moist soil in partial shade and sun, but can tolerate drier, rocky or sandy soil as well. 
      Pinxters produce funnel-shaped flowers that are showy and slightly fragrant from mid-April, when the trees are still bare of foliage, into early May.  Each pretty blossom has five long, curved stamens that protrude decoratively about an inch beyond the flower petals.  Bees, butterflies, and rubythroated hummingbirds here in the east, sip nectar from pinxter blooms, making them more interesting to experience.
     Growing up to eight feet or more in Pennsylvania, mountain laurels are heath shrubs with leaves on them through the year, adding a welcome touch of green to gray, deciduous woods in winter.  Mountain laurels also have gnarled limbs that give them a picturesque, rustic appearance.  These handsome shrubs bloom late in May into early June, and their attractive flowers are on top of their twisted branches.  Their flower buds, which are ribbed and resemble dabs of decorative icing on top of a cake, are pink.  But their flower petals, when fully open are mostly white, with just a suggestion of pink, and several cinnamon-colored dots around the inside rim of each blossom. 
     People who build homes in the woods realize the beauties of these shrubs and allow them to grow and bloom on the lawns those folks created in the woods.  This is a common heath in many woods in southeastern Pennsylvania.   
     Sheep laurels also have evergreen foliage, but are smaller than mountain laurels (up to three feet high) and grow their striking, deep-pink blooms of the year below the new growth of leaves on top of the shrubs.  Their leaves are narrow and drooping and their blossoms are shaped like those on mountain laurels.  This heath member flourishes in the north and down the Appalachian Mountains to Georgia.  I have seen sheep laurel blooming in the Pocono Mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania during June.
     Great rhododendron, which is the largest heath in the eastern United Sates, forms large, almost pure, clumps of itself in shaded ravines and north-facing slopes where the average temperatures are cooler.  This heath has deep-green, thick, evergreen leaves, which another bit of green to gray, winter woods.  And this species has lovely, white flower petals on its many blossoms by early July.  
     White-tailed deer, black bears and other kinds of wildlife hide out and rest in the dense, evergreen stands of great rhododendron that block wind and catch snow on its broad leaves.  And a few kinds of woodland birds, including hooded warblers, nest in rhododendrons.
     Catawba rhododendron is spotty in distribution in the southeastern United States.  Colonies of this heath occur mostly in the deciduous woods of the mountains in Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia.  Standing up to six feet tall, this kind of rhododendron blooms in May and its flower colors vary from light-pink to deep-pink to almost a purple hue.  Great patches of this type of rhododendron blooming in May make Roan Mountain, Tennessee famous.  
    All these members of the heath family, and others, in America have beautiful, showy blossoms in forest understories in spring or summer, depending on the species.  Those lovely blooms help make the woodlands the more inviting during the warmer seasons.  And species with evergreen foliage add a touch of green to the gray, dormant deciduous woods of winter.   
     

Some Small Summer Flowers

     Lancaster County, Pennsylvania's lawns, fields, meadows and roadsides, as in much of the eastern United States, are blessed with small plants that have diminutive, but beautiful, flowers from late May through much of summer.  Two of those plants have yellow blossoms, including yellow wood sorrels and Indian strawberries, two kinds grow blue blooms, including blue-eyed grass and forget-me-nots, and ground ivy produces purple flowers.  But all these plants are attractive and interesting, adding much intrigue to the human-made habitats they adapted to.
     Yellow wood sorrels are native to North America and adapted to many regularly mowed lawns.  In fact, some lawns have lovely, yellow carpets of this species' tiny, five-petaled blooms.  Each plant can be up to a foot tall, where it is not regularly mowed off, has clover-like leaves of three leaflets each, and visible, upright seed pods where the flowers were.  
     Indian strawberries are alien plants, having originally come from Europe.  This species, which is a small, prostrate vine on lawns mostly, can also be common on that built habitat, sometimes creating little patches of itself. Clumps of this pretty species has many yellow, five-petaled blooms over dark green, three-lobed foliage that looks like real strawberry leaves and attractive, red, half-inch fruits that look like strawberries, but have grown the tiny seeds on the surface of the fruits.  Those fruits are edible to certain kinds of birds, a variety of insects, rodents and box turtles.
     Blue-eyed grass is native to eastern North America, stands up to two feet high, and has uniquely-blue flowers and grass-like leaves among real grass.  This pretty species of plant inhabits fields, meadows and roadsides, but never in abundance that I have ever seen.  Its six, sky-blue petals per blossom are delightfully striking among the green vegetation surrounding them and add beauty to those built habitats.
     Forget-me-nots are alien plants in North America, having come from Europe.  This flowering species is as pretty as any other in this writing, but I think the present kind of plant, that stands up to 24 inches tall and has two, curling flower stems, has the most beautiful habitat; the edges of streams and ponds in sunny, green meadows.  Several flowers bloom along each curved stem and each tiny, lovely bloom has five, light-blue petals and a yellow "eye " in the center.
     Ground ivy is an alien from Europe that is common on many eastern North American lawns, particularly partly shaded ones.  This type of mint is a small, ground-hugging vine that has a pungent scent all its own when its rounded, scalloped leaves are cut or crushed and produces large patches of itself.  This kind of plant produces purple flowers that are quite lovely.
     The lovely flowers of these small plants are a joy to see on the human-made habitats they adapted to with no help from people.  Their adapting to built environments has given them additional room to grow and produce seed.  And they give us much beauty, free.  They are, to me at least, win/win species that I enjoy seeing every summer.              

Northern Nesting Thrushes

     Early one sunny morning in May several years ago, I was walking in woods on a mountain in northern Berks County, Pennsylvania.  The woodland was quiet except for the ethereal, flute-like songs of a male hermit thrush.  To me at that time, that whole wooded mountaintop's existence was validated by that bird's beautiful, flute-like singing.
     Four species of closely-related thrushes, including hermit thrushes, Swainson's thrushes, gray-cheeked thrushes and Bicknell's thrushes, nest near the floors of mixed coniferous/deciduous forests of northern North America.  And, being related, they have much in common.  All these attractive species are seldom-seen recluses on forest floors and in understories where they forage for invertebrates as their cousins, the American robins, do on regularly mowed lawns.  These forest thrushes run and stop, run and stop across forest floors, picking up invertebrates to eat where they find them.  These small thrushes have similar plumage patterns, with only minor differences among the species, including brown upper parts that blend them well into the dead-leaf carpets of fallen foliage on forest floors, and make them mostly unseen phantoms on that woodland habitat during summer.  To most people, these lovely thrushes are largely unseen, unknown flutes in the summer woods.  All these woodland thrushes have whitish under parts with rows of faint spotting on their chests.  They all have big, dark, and to us, appealing eyes that are suited to seeing well in the shadows of forest understories.  And the males of each species sing lovely, heart-rending songs that are flute-like.  These thrushes are handsome, feathered spirits in the charming fern, moss and leaf-covered floors of mixed coniferous/deciduous forests they raise young in.       
     But they don't all hatch offspring in the same woods, although there is some overlap.  They have dispersed themselves into different niches to reduce competition for nesting space and food.  Hermit thrushes nest in generally mixed coniferous/deciduous woods.  Swainson's thrushes seem to prefer raising babies in conifer woods containing willow thickets.  Gray-cheeks nest farther north than their relatives and prefer habitats of stunted spruces and firs.  And Bicknell's thrushes, which are almost identical to gray-cheeks in appearance and song, nest in isolated colonies in mixed woods on mountains above three thousand feet in southeastern Quebec, Nova Scotia, the Adirondack Mountains, Catskill Mountains, and the Green Mountains and White Mountains of northern New England.   Bicknell's probably are a recent off-shoot of gray-cheek thrushes, a small population of gray-cheeks that originally settled to nest in niches where gray-cheeks do not.  Bicknell's populations expanded and flourished from there.
     Though well-camouflaged, some adults of these thrush species are caught and eaten by saw-whet owls, sharp-shinned hawks, long-tailed weasels and other predators.  And red Squirrels and blue jays are the main predators of thrush eggs and small hatchlings. 
     Hermit thrushes raise youngsters in mixed forests of northern Pennsylvania, New York, New England, across Canada and Alaska and down the Rocky Mountains.  Hermits are the only woodland thrushes that have reddish-brown tails that they regularly and slowly pump up and down, probably as a communication to other hermit thrushes.  This species winters in the southern United States and Mexico.  Some wintering individuals even visit bird feeders in winter to eat seeds. 
     Swainson's thrushes are olive-brown on top with buffy cheeks and a buffy ring around each eye.  This  species nests in coniferous forests across Canada and Alaska and winters in Central America and northern South America.  Its lovely songs spiral up and away into thin air.
     Gray-cheeked thrushes, which have gray-brown upper parts, hatch young in stunted spruces as far north as trees will grow across Canada and Alaska.  And they winter in Central America and northern South America.  Their songs are beautiful, jumbled notes that end on a higher, flute note.  
     Bicknell's thrushes are the rarest of these thrush species.  They winter on some islands around the
Caribbean Sea.
     These four kinds of secretive, woodland floor phantoms are elegant in that charming, peaceful habitat of fallen leaves, ferns and dappled sunlight.  They are quick-footed and dainty, and wonderfully camouflaged on those forest floors where they get the bulk of their food during northern summers.  And their, delicate, exquisite songs are a joy to hear in the quiet woods.  Through many years of evolving, they are almost perfectly adapted to their forest floor habitats.   


        

A Tiny Woodland Swamp

     For a couple of hours one day this June, I fancied myself in the Carboniferous or Amphibian Period of over 300 million years ago.  I was sitting in my car on a woodland road beside an inches- deep puddle on a forest floor in a woods on a sunny, warm day in southern Berks County, Pennsylvania.  A few large dragonflies alternately perched on sunlit skunk cabbage leaves and chased each other over the woodland pool that was about an eighth of an acre in size.  A few dozen small, metallic-green flies seemed to be spawning in the shallow water; perhaps a reason the dragonflies were there, to catch and eat some of those flies.  I saw a couple of small, green frogs perched on top of fallen dead tree leaves matted along the shore of the pool and some rounded wood frog tadpoles half-buried among fallen leaves in that same puddle.  Only a few months ago, I saw several adult wood frogs spawning in that puddle and some of their egg masses.  Soon some of those tads will be small frogs that will leave the puddle for life under moist, fallen leaves on the surrounding forest floor.
     The hot and humid Carboniferous or Amphibian Period lasted about 60 million years, between 359 million years ago to 299 million years ago.  This was the time of giant trees falling into swamps and being pushed down and down under tremendous pressure from water and mud, which turned the wood to coal.
     Amphibians of many kinds, some species up to 18 feet long, dominated the land at that time.  And some types of insects and other invertebrates were large, including dragonflies with 30 inch wingspans.  But after 60 million years, the Carboniferous rain forests collapsed.  The climate became cooler and drier, probably caused by ice ages and a dropping sea level.  Amphibians fared poorly and never recovered to their former glory.  And those large invertebrates became extinct, leaving the small ones we know today that are better adapted to the current climate.        
     The three or four dragonflies at this small, woodland swamp were of interest.  I never saw their species before.  They were large, had clear wings and thin, dull-grayish-white abdomens.  They also seemed to have blue eyes.  I looked them up on the internet and learned they are great blue skimmers, a species that lives among forest pools, puddles, ditches and even puddles on woodland paths, all places of shallow, still water in the woods of the eastern United States.  This is an unusual niche for skimmers, a branch of dragonflies that prefers ponds in open, sunny habitats where they have room to zip about after prey and mates.  Perhaps great skimmers couldn't compete with their skimmer relatives for space and food around open, sunny impoundments, so they adapted to small, shallow pools in the woods where other skimmers didn't and don't inhabit. 
     Eastern box turtles and wood turtles, both inhabitants of forest floors in the eastern United States, like to soak in these shallow puddles during hot, summer days.  Black bears also enjoy wallowing in these pools on hot days.
     I saw a few "shoreline" birds at this inch-deep pool in the woods.  They were one each of gray catbird, American robin and purple grackle, all species we commonly see on suburban lawns.  They all moved slowly along the water's edge, not all at once, and ate the invertebrates they found in the mud and water.  I think these kinds of birds were originally species of woodland edges near water.  The road where I sat was the edge.
     But the single bird that thrilled me the most was a veery, which is a kind of thrush, a little, brown phantom of bottomland forest floors.  I first saw that veery running and stopping, running and stopping, along a fallen log about 30 yards back in the woods, as a robin, which is another kind of thrush, would on a mowed lawn.  I looked at the veery with 16 power binoculars and noticed that he seemed to be staring back at me, perhaps in curiosity.  And I noted that the veery was a lovely bird that fit just right into its niche of leafy, woodland floors.     
     Veeries are brown on top, which blends them into their niche of dead-leaf-carpeted forest floors.  And they are off-white below with rows of faint spots on their chests.  They also have large, dark eyes that allow them to see well on the shaded forest floors.  After many years of changing to better fit into their niche, veeries, like all forms of life, are well built for where they live.
     It was pleasant to sit quietly by that woodland puddle and watch wildlife going about its daily routine.  And it was particularly enjoyable to imagine being millions of years back in time to the age of giant amphibians and monstrous dragonflies when logs became coal.      
    

Wildlife Eating Mulberries

     It happens in mid-June every year in southeastern Pennsylvania; several kinds of birds, mammals and insects, and two species of reptiles, eat juicy mulberries from the trees and off the ground.  Mulberries, in their abundance, are a big food supply for those critters along hedgerows and woodland edges in farm country.
     Many birds of several species, usually a few kinds at once in mulberry trees, are entertaining to watch ingesting mulberries; the newly-developed, white ones, pink ones as they mature, and the deep-purple, fully-developed and juicy ones from the trees.  Causing most of the action, little groups of American robins, purple grackles and starlings fly in and out of the trees, shaking the twigs with their feeding, almost constantly, all day, every day, while the mulberries last.  Those birds eat the mulberries themselves, and feed them to their recently fledged young.    
     But several other species of birds, perhaps in lesser numbers, also consume mulberries in the trees, including cedar waxwings, Baltimore and orchard orioles, gray catbirds, northern mockingbirds and northern cardinals from neighboring woods and thickets, and red-winged blackbirds from nearby fields and meadows.  These types of birds have beauties in themselves, and they enhance the beauties and intrigues of the mulberry trees they are feeding in by their almost constant zipping in and out of the trees to get fruit.  These birds, too, feed a lot of those berries to their babies in their nests, and to recently fledged young.
     Gray squirrels eat mulberries during the day, but most mammals, including black bears, white-tailed deer, red foxes, gray foxes, coyotes, raccoons, striped skunks, opossums and a variety of rodents, feed on mulberries under the cover of darkness at night.  Sometimes one can spot the tracks of those mammals in mud under the trees during the day, which can be exciting finds.  Coons and possums climb into the trees to ingest mulberries, but the other mammals eat many of them off the ground.  Deer and bears, however, can reach high to get mulberries on lower limbs.
     A variety of invertebrates, including hornets, yellow jackets, millipedes, sow bugs, slugs, snails, at least a few types of flies and others, feed on bruised or decaying mulberries on the ground.  Some of those invertebrates become food for toads, skunks, a variety of small birds and other critters in a number oif food chains based on rotting mulberries.
     Eastern box turtles and wood turtles also eat mulberries fallen to the ground.  These two kinds of woodland turtles are omnivorous and take advantage of food supplies when and where they occur within their limited roaming areas.  These reptiles probably smell the decaying fruit from a bit of a distance, and make haste, for turtles, to get that fruit.
     Mulberry trees are scattered across the landscape by birds ingesting their berries, digesting the pulp, but passing some of the seeds in their droppings as they fly here and there over the countryside.
Some of those seeds sprout and become medium-sized trees.
     And once established, mulberry trees are hard to kill.  Wherever I lived in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, one or more mulberry trees were on the lawns, probably introduced there by birds passing through and passing seeds.  For many years I annually cut those mulberries down to the ground, but each year each one sent up new shoots.  I never did successfully eliminate any of them.  That probably can be done only by killing every root of each tree.    
     Mulberry trees are beneficial to several kinds of wildlife in the middle of June each year.  They are in North America to stay, and wildlife can be glad of it.  And the visits of wild critters help make mulberry trees interesting to us humans.   

Insects Preying on Aphids

     One day toward the end of May of this year, I noticed thousands of tiny, yellow aphids on the soft, juicy stems of our two rose-of-Sharon bushes.  Close to a week later, early in June, I saw those aphids again on the rose-of-Sharons, plus a few other kinds of insects that prey on aphids, including ladybug beetle larvae, long-legged flies and a kind of small ants.  And there were several  white eggs of eastern green lacewings, each egg suspended by its own thin web from rose-of-Sharon leaves.  After the larvae of the lacewings hatch from their eggs, they will feed on aphids, and so will the adults of that species.    
     Aphids are tiny creatures that suck sap from tender parts of vegetation.  Hordes of them can cause damage to vegetation because of their tremendous numbers that sometimes cover the plants almost from "wall to wall".  But those same overwhelming aphid gatherings are an abundant source of food to these insect predators and other kinds of creatures, including certain kinds of small birds.
     Ladybug larvae are flat, a quarter inch long and dark with orange markings.  The adults of most species of ladybugs have red wing covers spotted with black, which makes those insects quite attractive.  Immature and adult ladybugs both grab the soft-bodied aphids, one at a time, and suck the juices from them, discarding the empty exoskeletons.  Interestingly, swarms of ladybugs hibernate together in sheltered places, including behind tree bark still on the trees, fallen leaves on the ground and in crevices between rocks, through winter. 
     Some orchardists and other people buy ladybug beetles to release into fields and gardens.  There the ladybugs clean up the seemingly innumerable aphids.
     Adult long-legged flies do have long legs for their small body size and are metallic-green, often looking like tiny, sparkling drops of rain on green plants.  These tiny flies are quick to fly from leaf to leaf in vegetation and also ingest the juices from aphids.   
     The young and adult eastern green lacewings have light-green bodies, which camouflages them in foliage.  Adults have lovely golden eyes and four attractive, clear wings, each wing decorated with prominent veining that gives them their name lacewings.  The larvae and the half-inch-long adults of this species, too, prey on the diminutive aphids.   
     Certain kinds of ants prey on aphids, too, but don't kill them in the process.  As stated, aphids suck sugary sap from plants.  And they excrete a sugary waste substance from their bodies that we call "honey dew".  Some types of ants love to consume that nutritious honey dew and lick it off the aphids.  Some kinds of ants protect aphids from certain small predators as payment for the honey dew the ants ingested.   
     There is no end to the activities of nature, even at one's own doorstep.  Keep watching for nature, wherever you may be. 

Spring and seepage salamanders

     Percolating little springs and inch-deep trickles of clear water are charming amidst matted carpets of fallen, dead leaves, patches of moss, stands of shining club moss and many large leaves of skunk cabbage plants on the shaded, bottomland floors of deciduous woods in the Mid-Atlantic States.  White-tailed deer, gray foxes, gray squirrels and a variety of woodland birds, including wild turkeys, wood thrushes, ovenbirds and scarlet tanagers, drink from their cool waters.  Box turtles and wood turtles soak in their cooling waters during hot, summer days.  And at least five attractive species of lungless salamanders, each about five inches long, live in, and are somewhat restricted to, those enchanting, aquatic habitats where, in my imagination, Forest Fairies could dwell.  They include dusky, two-lined, long-tailed, spring and red salamanders.  
      Adults and juveniles of those salamander species hide under mats of fallen leaves, clumps of alga and stones on the bottoms of these clear, cool springs and seeps.  But when exposed, they quickly wiggle away to nearby cover.  They don't have lungs, but take in oxygen and release carbon dioxide through their thin, moist skins and throat linings.  Being amphibians, they have smooth, damp skins that must stay that way for survival.  And these amphibians, these salamanders, can exchange carbon dioxide and oxygen whether in water or in moist air.   
     All salamanders, young and old, including these species, consume a variety of invertebrates they find tucked away in and around their home springs and rivulets, and the immediate forest floor during times of warmth and rain.  Salamanders have excellent vision with their large, appealing eyes they use to locate their prey in partial darkness.
     All these lungless salamander species spawn eggs in the tiny, crystalline seeps they live in on woodland floors.  The aquatic young are a half inch long, and plain to blend into their protective, watery habitats.  They feed on tiny invertebrates in the water, mature and, eventually, spawn themselves in their home trickles and springs.  
     These five attractive species of salamanders are different in skin colors and patterns, which helps identify them.  Dusky salamanders, for example, are brown with darker markings, which camouflages them.  Two-lined salamanders are dull-yellow on top, with two dark lines down their backs from their heads to their tails.  Long-tailed salamanders are delightfully striking with pale-orange skins, dotted with black.  And the related spring and red salamanders are vividly orange with black spots.  These latter two species are more robust than other kinds of lungless salamanders.
     A few kinds of lungless salamanders are THEE charming, amphibian residents in the small, intriguing springs and rivulets in bottomland woods in the Middle Atlantic States.  Those pretty amphibians and their interesting habitats are beautiful, like a home for Forest Fairies, amid carpets of fallen dead leaves, moss, shining club moss and skunk cabbage leaves under the green canopies of summer woods.   

    
                 
     

Blackberries, Multiflora Rose and Honeysuckle

     A few days ago, I stopped at a woodland edge covered with blackberry and multiflora rose canes and Japanese honeysuckle vines that were all in bloom.  The blackberry and rose canes had many sharp thorns and white flowers, while the honeysuckle had elongated, white and yellow blossoms.  I saw a male northern cardinal, a song sparrow, a gray catbird, a Carolina wren and a yellow warbler flitting one at a time among those leafy, flowery canes and vines during the 45 minutes I was beside them.  All these species of small birds, and others, no doubt were nesting in that invasive, impenetrable jungle that offers them and their young shelter from predators and the elements. 
     The thorny bushes and honeysuckle began to bloom toward the end of May and will continue to do so into June.  The rose and honeysuckle have pretty blossoms with sweet aromas that travel some distance on a warm, early-summer breeze.  But all these plants are invasive and form dense thickets along sunny woodland and stream edges, hedgerows between fields and along roadsides.  And all of them offer food and shelter to several kinds of wildlife the year around.  Bees and other kinds of insects visit the flowers of these species to sip nectar, pollinating the blooms in the process.     
     When the native blackberry blossoms are fertilized, each tiny female bloom in each flower head develops a small, green bump that grows and becomes white, then pink, red and, finally, close to an inch long, juicy and blackish-purple by the end of June.  A variety of birds, white-tailed deer, red foxes, gray foxes, raccoons and other types of mammals, and box turtles and wood turtles, feast on the multitudes of blackberries.
     Blackberry leaves turn red in October and are beautifully vivid in sunlight.  Eventually that foliage falls to the ground, but the canes still offer protection to wintering birds and mammals.  
     Multiflora rose is originally from Asia and was introduced to North America to be living fences and wildlife shelter, which it has been over many years.  But this rose is invasive in sunny habitats and has become a nuisance to many people in the United States who try in vain to eliminate it.  Green berries form during summer where the flowers had been.  But they are decorative red by autumn, and eaten by rodents and a variety of berry-eating birds during fall and winter.
     Multiflora rose not only reproduces through seeds in its berries, but also by its canes.  Each cane arches up, across and down, sprouting roots when the cane tips touch the ground, forming new bushes.  In this way each multiflora rose shrub "walks" across a meadow, eventually dominating it.
     Japanese honeysuckle is also from Asia, as its name implies.  Ruby-throated hummingbirds visit the flowers of this common, invasive vine to sip nectar and capture small insects.  This vine with its lovely blossoms crawls up trees, poles and across the ground, sometimes smothering other kinds of vegetation in the process.  This vine has black berries that are eaten by rodents and small birds through winter.          
     These plants are scattered across the countryside by the digestive tracts of birds.  The birds consume their berries, digest the pulp of those fruits, but pass many of the seeds in their droppings as they fly from place to place.  
     These lovely, invasive species of plants are here to stay!  They are very hard to eliminate.  But they do benefit many species of wildlife, including insects, birds, mammals and others.  And they have pretty, fragrant flowers.  We may as well try to enjoy their benefits to people and wildlife.

Blue Orchard Mason Bees

     As honey bee colonies suffer from Colony Collapse Disorder, more farmers, gardeners, orchardists and others realize that native insects also pollinate crops and fruit trees.  Solitary bees, hornets, flies, butterflies and other insects are some of those pollinators.  And blue orchard mason bees, which originally are native to woodland edges where holey dead trees provide nurseries and flowers in bordering fields provide food near the nurseries, are one of the better of them, fertilizing many blooms a day, as they sip nectar from those blossoms.
     Fascinating and attractive little critters, mason bees are better pollinators than honey bees in the longer run.  They are hardier than honey bees, active earlier in spring, will pollinate during rain and cool weather and fertilize more blooms in a day's time.
     Appearing black at times, blue orchard mason bees also are a shiny dark-blue, particularly in sunlight, and slightly smaller than honey bees.  And being hairy all over, they are good pollinators.  Their many hairs collect pollen grains from flowers and brush them onto other blooms of the same species, thus fertilizing them, and later producing a nut, fruit or vegetable.
     Mason bees are solitary, meaning each fertile female, and they all are, works alone to produce offspring.  Several females may rear young in up to six-inch-deep holes in dead wood in loose colonies to take advantage of that limited nesting niche.  But each one doesn't depend on other female mason bees.  However, there is some safety in numbers, though larger woodpeckers chip out some of the eggs, larvae or pupae to eat.
     Each female mason bee works independently to provision her young with balls of flower nectar and pollen.  She starts in the back of each of her wooden tunnels by placing balls of pollen grains and flower nectar in the backs of those burrows, lays one egg on each ball and seals off that part of each burrow with a mix of clay and mud, hence their mason name.  She repeats that process until each of her holes in the tree is filled with several marriages of food and larvae, sealed off with mud.  Female mason bee larvae will be in the back of each tunnel and male young will be in the front.  Each larva hatches in its cell, eats all of its provisions and pupates in that same cell through winter.
     Early in spring, the males, which were in front of the tunnels, leave their cells first and wait outside for the emergence of females.  When females come out, the males mate with them and die.  Then those new females make their own nurseries in dead wood in trees.  By mid-summer, their work is done and they die.  But their offspring in those wooden cells carry on the species into next year.
     Blue orchard mason bees can be bought, and housed in wooden tubes clumped together and attached to a tree or building.  Those built nursery structures substitute for holes in trees, and increase the number of these beneficial, pollinating bees.  But whether wild or living in tubes in gardens, these are lovely, intriguing insects that help make life more interesting.