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.

In May of some years, I’ve traveled to Delaware Bay beaches in New Jersey and Delaware to experience the convergence of many thousands of spawning horseshoe crabs, nesting laughing gulls, and migrating shorebirds, including red knots, ruddy turnstones, dunlin, and semi-palmated sandpipers.

I visit the shallows of certain ponds and wetlands in, and bordering, woods in southeastern Pennsylvania a couple evenings every April.

Winter and early spring are the times of waterfowl (ducks, geese, and swans) in southeastern Pennsylvania.

One early afternoon in February a few years ago, I was working at my desk by a window that allowed views of our back lawn. At the time, beautiful snowflakes fell gently through still air from a gray sky.

In winter, over several years, I’ve seen wintering northern harriers, which are a kind of hawk, and short-eared owls hunting mice and small birds in marshes and tall-grass fields in southeastern Pennsylvania, including at Middle Creek Wildlife Area and Gettysburg National Park.