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.

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.

Winter seems drab to many people in southeastern Pennsylvania. Gray skies and deciduous trees, brown fields, and cold, ice, and snow dampen human spirits. But bright colors in nature beautify winter landscapes and lift people’s emotions.

Winter seems drab to many people in southeastern Pennsylvania. Gray skies and deciduous trees, brown fields, and cold, ice, and snow dampen human spirits. But bright colors in nature beautify winter landscapes and lift people’s emotions.

Beside hunting, fishing, and gathering, Native Americans living in eastern forests had a unique, interesting, and ingenious way of growing crops in small fields in those shaded woods. Their only tools, before the coming of European settlers, were stone axes and sharp-pointed sticks.

The 4-foot-tall, 88-pound emperor penguins are the only birds on Earth that raise young on sea ice around the Antarctic Continent during the southern hemisphere’s winter, which is our summer.

July to the end of October is the time of insects in southeastern Pennsylvania because those invertebrates are cold-blooded and active only during warmer weather.