Tag Archive | Nature Story

A Winter Jewel

A Winter Jewel

Winter forests have a dismal lifeless look with leafless trees, gray tree trunks and crumbled fallen leaves. Yet I still enjoy walking through woods at this time of year to look for signs of life. In the midst of crumpled brown decaying leaves, I sometimes find a splash of green on the woodland floor. Bending […]

Six-legged Sex

Six-legged Sex

Stepping out my front door, I walk right into an orgy of sex. I am surrounded by couples attached abdomen to abdomen. Crawling entangled bodies writhe in a mass next to the front window of the porch. It is late summer in Florida and the love bug mating season is upon us. Love bugs are […]

The Last Big Harvest

The Last Big Harvest

Fall is the time of year when goldenrods brighten the fields and roadsides with showy yellow blossoms. It is the time for the last major harvesting of nectar and pollen by bees, wasps, migrating butterflies  and many other insects. Nectar gathered by bumblebees and honeybees will help these insects survive the winter. Pollen is also […]

The Desirable Wildflower

Black-eyed Susan is a native North American wildflower that thrives in sun lit prairies, fields and roadsides. It was originally thought to have spread from the Great Plains eastward, but recent research indicates it was native to colonial towns in Maryland. It was the colonists who named the plant black-eyed Susan featured in an English […]

Endangered in New York, Extirpated from Pennsylvania

Endangered in New York, Extirpated from Pennsylvania

Walking through a pine barren habitat where pitch pine, oak trees and heaths dominate the landscape, I came upon a disturbed area where the sandy soils were saturated with water and sedges, rushes and grasses dominated the opening. There were dozens of orange flowers on short stems along with sundews where the vegetation was less […]