Beyond tree branches and driving rain, Hurricane Sandy delivered flying surprises that prompted avid birders to describe her severe weather and blustery gusts as a productive storm.     “It is as if the entire Northeast were a giant snow globe that has been lifted up and shaken, with a variety of bird species being found far from where they were before Sandy’s arrival,” the website ebird.com reported.     I am forced to agree. Waking up to a...

Picture this: A chilly night cloaked in mist with vultures roosting by the dozens on lampposts, in trees behind the grocery store.     That was a rare sight at Bay Hills Shopping Center, but I see vultures almost every day. Usually turkey vultures, distinguished from their black cousins by red heads and outer feathers of black and brown. They often perch on the signs or lampposts on the eastern approach to the Severn River Bridge. They circle the skies around Broadneck, riding...

Clusters of long-legged creatures congregate around my screen door and atop my plants.     Granddaddy or daddy long-legs, also called harvestmen, turn up just about everywhere inside and outside of my home. I find them on walls and plants, the clothesline and the stone patio.     Daddy long-legs are arachnids, more closely related to scorpions than to spiders. They have one body section, two eyes and a segmented abdomen. Spiders have two body sections, eight eyes...

With summer at an end, hummers prepare for their long journey south Two hummingbirds have been warring in my backyard over nectar the color of cherry Kool-Aid.     They hover, frozen in time, sipping at the feeder and my hibiscus plants. I sit frozen too, watching them.     I hear them first, hum-hum-hum-hum. Then I see them, with iridescent wings hovering in mid-air as they eat. Tireless and melodic, they remind me that life is meant to be savored.  ...