Boy, have I seen a “bunch” of changes in my lifetime. Who’d have dreamed that we can, with our phone, get almost any info that you need, set an alarm, locate a business, and get a menu, in seconds. I remember buying my first 45s then 33s, eight track, cassettes, CDs, and wouldn’t you know it, now my car doesn’t even have a CD player. In winter as youngsters a hilly back road served as a sledding area where for hours, we “ditched” each other. Now, there are salted roads and too many cars.

Nature events and habitats have been greatly altered. I bet many of you remember grabbing an empty Skippy jar and running around for an hour or two catching as many fireflies as you could. Right there in your backyard. Later, mom would scold you to release those dozens of “lightning bugs” before they died.

A few nights ago, I sat on the front porch and struggled to find a half dozen fireflies pulsing at dusk. Our expectation of having gorgeous lawns (using herbicides and insecticides) has really decreased their numbers.

If catching fireflies got boring, the next evening I would grab a handful of pebbles and watch the darkening sky for bats. I enjoyed fooling these flying mammals by tossing a pebble in front of them to make them alter their flight. It was fun and their terrific echolocation amazed me.

Page forward about 55 years. During the past weeks, I sat on the deck well before dawn scanning the sky in the dim light. Two mornings I saw one bat, the other, not a single one. They’ve been decimated by humans carrying white-nosed syndrome fungus into their caves. Will they soon be gone entirely?

I hope of few of you enjoyed a whippoorwill calling as nightfall approached; repeating its “whippoorwill, whippoorwill, whippoorwill” call over and over. I still regularly heard them from my East Penn Township home until about 1985. After that, the summer evenings were quiet. New homes, some forest clearing nearby, and then the loss of much of their overwintering habitat in the tropics depleted their numbers.

I couldn’t wait until fall when the fields were harvested and Dad, his best friend Wayne Rehrig, and I would spend a night or two “spotlighting deer.” Dad went to the usual spots; Bubardie, the White Oaks, Koch’s Flats, and Fairyland farms fields. Today, small strip malls, mini marts, and huge developments took over those areas.

Those same developments today harbor human-acclimated deer that residents feed and enjoy watching in their backyards.

But when winter arrives, they curse those same deer after eating their expensive shrubbery. With hunting illegal around homes the deer population can’t be reduced. The deer’s need for 8 pounds of food daily have created browse lines in those developments that leave so little underbrush that thrushes or towhees can’t even nest without the forest understory.

Lastly, my annual Carbon County bird list stands at 165 species this year, but one in particular is missing, the ruffed grouse. Its falling numbers are attributed to two things, the fragmentation of forest areas and the increased mosquito population related to much warmer spring temperatures and later fall frosts. This warming climate allows the mosquito vectors longer seasons to breed and thus transmit West Nile virus to the birds.

Change is inevitable, but let’s find ways to slow the human destructive activities, our insatiable energy needs, our throwaway mentality, and a growing use of poisons. Let’s allow the future generations to remember the way it was for them.

Test Your Outdoor Knowledge: Which of these factors has also reduced the firefly population? A. too many outdoor lights, B. warmer winters, C. increased predators.

Last Week’s Trivia Answer: The kestrel eats many large insects such as grasshoppers and cicadas in the summer months.

Contact Barry Reed at breed71@gmail.com.