R. Mercer’s Musings about Nature

The return of the painted buntings to Seabrook Island last week also marks our impending return to Pennsylvania. It is hard to leave such a stunning clown-colored bird, especially when it sings throughout the day just off our deck. The male dressed in a rainbow of colors sings an incessantly and relatively consistent soft warble. (Click…

“Stop!” I said, as I instinctively threw my arms out to my sides in the universal language. The group came to an immediate stop. I pointed to a spot just three steps ahead directly in my path. There laid curled up a dark plump snake. Our guide for the day, Chris Crolley, Executive Director of…

One of the reasons for migrating south is to enjoy eating our meals outside. So, on January 11, 2018, with the temperatures at 68oF, Eileen and I ate lunch on the screened porch of the condo we rent. Everywhere we looked, birds swirled around. We could hear the high pitched (and for those who can…

Tomorrow is yard waste pick up day for my community, the last of three pick up dates. For the last couple days our hearing has been assaulted by the many leaf blowers pressed into service to gather the remaining leaves. Yesterday, my neighbors and I addressed the leaves in our yards. The two neighbors across…

I found a colorful and fairly large spider while removing the stump from the mulberry in my yard. This is the same mulberry I wrote about earlier this year. (https://www.mercersmusings.com/2017/06/14/mulberry-is-open-for-business/) In July while replacing the split rail fence that wraps around my yard, I noticed the mulberry leaning dramatically towards the house. For the last…

“You should see  the crows out here!” my wife, Eileen exclaimed. “It is like the Alfred Hitchcock movie The Birds.” Sure enough, out along the back edge of our property at least 100 crows fidgeted around. Many were perched in nearby trees sitting and waiting. The others were in two spindly cedar trees (Juniperus virginiana…

Life brings little pleasures! The other day, Eileen and I took a hike up into Miller Canyon looking for birds. We arrived shortly after sunrise and trekked up to a portion of the canyon that had nice, tall trees, a mixture of oak, maple, cottonwood, sycamore, and pines. The perfect habitat for any number of…

Two times this week I had the pleasure of joining some great naturalists out in Delhaas Woods. The first time was for the North American Butterfly Association’s annual butterfly census. Six of us started out the morning (my kind of morning–10 AM) in the lawns behind the old Lafayette Elementary School. My companions, Mary Anne,…

Once I realized that multiple species used my tiny backyard, I became obsessed with know which was which. There are only a limited number of local species I needed to learn and I know hundreds of bird songs. This should have been easy. No, I spend hours and hours listening to audio clips and sorting…

On June 28, I heard the first cicada of the year (FOY). It gave a single call. The next day, I heard one more call in the middle of the day. That evening, one sang first in the yard to the north, then one sang in my yard, and, finally, I heard one in the…