About the size of a carpenter bee, a mysterious, 1.5-inch creature hovers like a hummingbird before flowers during the day and pokes its long proboscis into each bloom to sip nectar.

One afternoon, late in July, several years ago, I was driving on a country road in southern Lebanon County. Suddenly, a group of a dozen dove-sized birds flew swiftly and low across the road, close in front of me.

In April, every so many years, I have seen wavering lines and V-shaped flocks, one after another, of low-flying brown pelicans migrating north along the Atlantic Ocean shores and beaches of Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina.

Summer weather has arrived, and many people vacation along the Atlantic Coast, where numerous kinds of semi-aquatic creatures live, including related ghost crabs and fiddler crabs.

Summer weather has arrived, and many people vacation along the Atlantic Coast, where numerous kinds of semi-aquatic creatures live, including related ghost crabs and fiddler crabs.

Tulip trees and sweet gum trees are attractive, native species that dominate much of the Southern Coastal Plain of extreme southeastern Pennsylvania to Georgia.

Tulip trees and sweet gum trees are attractive, native species that dominate much of the Southern Coastal Plain of extreme southeastern Pennsylvania to Georgia.

I have enjoyed seeing several eastern coyotes at Lake Onalaska off the Mississippi River in Wisconsin, at Rowe Sanctuary along the Platte River in Nebraska, at deer feeders in Maine and Iowa, and at other places through live cameras and our home computer screens.

John Burroughs, farmer and famous naturalist in the 19^th century, wrote, “Next week, or the week after, it may be time to begin plowing, and other sober work about the farm, but this week we will picnic among the maples, and our campfire shall be an incense to spring.”

Dunlin, sanderlings, ruddy turnstones, and purple sandpipers are small shorebirds that nest on the Arctic tundra. However, many individuals of each kind winter along the Atlantic Ocean coasts of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and farther south.

Dunlin, sanderlings, ruddy turnstones, and purple sandpipers are small shorebirds that nest on the Arctic tundra. However, many individuals of each kind winter along the Atlantic Ocean coasts of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and farther south.

Happily, bald eagle populations have increased greatly throughout North America, including in southeastern Pennsylvania, because of the ban on the use of DDT since 1972.

Much farmland in southeastern Pennsylvania is devoted to raising field corn. Cornfields are human-made habitats that have stages of succession, from bare ground to rows of tall corn plants, to short stubble after being harvested. And each stage is inhabited by certain adaptable kinds of wildlife.

Wandering albatrosses are well named. They often soar hundreds of miles a day, low over the southern oceans that circle Antarctica, all day, every day, for a couple of weeks straight.

I’ve seen a few southern flying squirrels “in the flesh” in southeastern Pennsylvania in my lifetime and heard about others from people who saw those charming little rodents, mostly at birdfeeders at night.

I remember walking along a sidewalk when I was 5 years old and hearing chattering overhead. Looking up, I saw a loose group of small birds flying swiftly.

By late summer, most of us have been pestered by yellowjackets at picnics, and some of us noticed the gray, football-sized paper nests of bald-faced hornets attached to twigs in trees.

One sultry, moonlit July evening a few years ago, I enjoyed seeing, and smelling, the large, white blossoms on a 30-foot-tall southern magnolia tree on a southeastern Pennsylvania lawn.

Solitary sandpipers and Bonaparte’s gulls are unusual shorebirds in their respective families.

Solitary sandpipers and Bonaparte’s gulls are unusual shorebirds in their respective families.