I enjoy watching spiders but admit to being a bit reluctant about picking them up. Although humans tend to be arachnophobes, due either to intrinsic or learned attitudes, we must admit admiration for the amazing design and adaptations of […]
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My wife and I have devoted a lot of effort to providing plants for wildlife to utilize for food and shelter. I greatly prefer to have a plant provide nectar for hummingbirds than to put out a feeder with sugar […]
I am a huge fan of milkweeds due to their special attraction not only to monarch butterflies but also to a considerable list of other insects that are milkweed specialists, and some generalists who use milkweeds as a community […]
We have planted many hundreds of trees and shrubs on our property to encourage wildlife of all sorts, so I keep a careful eye out for pests that eat these plants. Some of the worse problems are due to […]
Many of us gain great solace from walks in the woods and fields observing and communing with Nature. Each of us may be more or less analytical depending on the day’s mood or the locality. Some days you may […]
On a Summer visit to our Florida island retreat we had an unusual visitor to our small backyard bird bath (see photo). An adult black crowned night heron (BCNH) was standing in the bath and trying not very successfully to […]
As a long-time herpetologist I have always enjoyed listening to the calls of frogs and toads and trying to figure out which species are which and what triggers calling. Indeed one of my “bucket list” items was to acquire […]
How often do we just muddle along without much clarity of thought? I found myself in this situation when I was returning from a very early breeding bird survey on one of Virginia’s highest peaks (Whitetop) and noticed some interesting […]
Whenever an insect lands on you, it is time to pay attention and figure out if there is going to be a problem! Is there going to be a bite or sting or just a tickle with no further […]
In my wanderings among the woods and fields I often encounter beetles, which are not usually considered among the most colorful of the insects, as are the butterflies. However there are some striking exceptions to this rule, one of which […]
It is a considerable pleasure to visit unusual new places to compare their life forms with those we are familiar with. It does our brains good to be confronted with strange new shapes and colors and challenges us to evaluate […]
While on one of my daily nature walks I looked down and spotted one of the true beauties of the woods, a red eft (see photo, background). They wander around, especially after rains and are very slow-moving and unafraid. […]
While surveying the kingdom this morning I was struck by the beauty of several of our fields which were planted in “wildflowers” in previous years and cut as often as once a year, and sometimes burned every three years. […]
Flowers are of course some of the most beautiful objects within Nature’s realm and they can be considered at a number of emotional and intellectual levels. If one thinks simply of the amazing variations in color and form, flowers can […]
One of our favorite places to stop while traveling through GA is the Botanical Garden in Athens. Now I hope we may be forgiven for revealing that we do not always focus entirely on the fabulous plants, both exotic […]
Fred Bernstein and I did a survey of the birds on the Myakka River Rookery Island just south of the US 41 bridge today in North Port (4.2.10). This island lies adjacent to the Myakka State Forest and just […]
We are “migrating” north to our VA farm tomorrow from SW FL and the most interesting natural event this morning locally was a virtual swarm of large greenish darners flying around at Cedar Pt park. The only one I could […]
We had a small weather front a few days ago and some interesting birds are trickling through our Florida yard on their way north. Today we had a male orchard oriole (see photo nectaring on Cape honeysuckle from S […]
This time of year in Florida we sometimes hesitate to leave our yard since some really interesting birds are migrating through. We have recently had hooded (see photo) and parula warblers, white-eyed and blue-headed vireos, scarlet and summer tanagers, and […]
The extraordinarily wet Winter conditions have proven a barrier to our usual explorations of the ecological wonders to be found at Myakka State Forest (MSF) in Sarasota County, FL. However we threw caution to the winds today and drove our […]