You’ve decided it is time to bring a four-legged family member into your home. Congratulations! It’s a great decision.       You probably know whether you are looking for a dog, cat or other companion animal. But you don’t know where to start. Maybe you visit a shelter or a rescue. Maybe you start looking on social media.      You see lots of little faces in need. How do you know which is right for you?

      I have reached the age where people more often want to tell me what to do than not. One of those topics was about a new dog. I was instructed to get a dog on the small side to up the likelihood that folks would volunteer to watch him in the event I wanted to be away for a while. My preference has always been toward a dog hefty enough to wrestle. Now, however, we are in new territory with a seriously high-spirited Welsh terrier.

Meet Bay Weekly Delivery Dogs Amber and Mr. Kimble       Two new dogs joined the Bay Weekly family last summer, Amber and Mr. Kimble. They both came to live with drivers Jim Lyles and Peggy Traband in Deale from Collie Rescue in North Carolina. 

      When I’m asked, What is the name of the red bird I see around here? there are four birds that I consider.       They are the male northern cardinal, the male scarlet tanager, the male summer tanager and the male house finch. I assume that the pattern is obvious: Only the males of the species are red; The females are brown or yellowish.  

        The new issue of the journal Primates has a monkey tale that has experts shaking their heads.             It’s the story of a Barbary macaque named Pipo, who was hit by a car in a Moroccon national park. Given that there are only 10,000 of these creatures left, the people of Monkey Watch keep an eye on them.

     I  have been seeing comments about black rat snakes getting into bird-nesting boxes. A smooth support with a critter guard will generally keep them out.

     Before you spray your garden for those pests that seem to sample everything you like to grow, learn who the good guys are, as they will be your allies in the long run. The less insecticides you use, the more a natural balance of predators will occur. There are many good bugs out there ready to help. It may take some time, as they need to be encouraged. 

A peacock’s tail is actually brown. But it possesses structural surface properties that create a bright rainbow of hues. The colorful display is due to iridescence.

      When I think of the predators of caterpillars, I think of birds and lizards. But a more common killer is the Braconid wasp. These tiny wasps find soft-bodied caterpillars including cabbage worms and hornworms and firmly attach eggs to them. The developing wasp larvae live off the caterpillar without killing it until it develops into a chrysalis. At that point the wasp larvae mature and burst out of the chrysalis, killing the developing butterfly or moth. The wasps then go looking for more caterpillars.

     European settlers arriving in North America encountered huge populations of eastern elk. These thousand-pound members of the deer family ranged from Louisiana to Canada.      Have you ever wondered how the Elk River and Elkton were named? Elk were quite plentiful in Maryland.      By 1870, America’s last Eastern elk was shot in Pennsylvania.