If you’re a bird lover, now’s the time to provide a way station for species that live in the often-frigid Northeast. Birds are hard-wired from the nest to scavenge for food, but they have a tough time in the winter, when provisions are at their leanest.

Bird is the word

Richard Crossley is on a mission to make birding cool

While birds of exotic or colorful plumage always attract “ohhs” of admiration, it takes a real bird lover to find joy in the common grackle, a bossy, pest-infested blackbird that bullies smaller birds and eats just about anything, including garbage.

Meet Richard Crossley of West Cape May, a real bird lover.

“For me, the grackle is a stunning bird,” raves Crossley, author of the new “Crossley ID Guide: Eastern Birds.” “It looks mean and ugly – sinister I think is an appropriate word – but this is a mind-blowing bird that does all sorts of funky displays, cocking its tail and bowing it … If you see it in the right light, it isn’t black at all, but an iridescent purple-green-blue. These birds just have incredible character.”

The wonder and mystery of the axolotl

On a recent evening, I was reading a book (“Say Her Name” by Francisco Goldman) that opened with a woman in search of axolotls in Paris.

“Ou sont les axolotls?” said Goldman’s wife, who longed to see the strange amphibious creatures she’d read about in an essay by Argentine writer Julio Cortazar.

My first response was, “Huh? Axo-what?” I’d never heard of axolotls, which are salamanders that never mature beyond the larvae stage – in essence, perpetual tadpoles.

Next day, when I went with my daughter to the Cape May County Zoo, we stopped at the reptile house to see the visiting albino alligator, “Sweetheart” (which will be there till the end of the month, so now’s the time to visit her). And what to my wondering eyes should appear but an aquarium filled with axolotls.

The National Wildlife Federation wants to add 10,000 more certified wildlife habitats to its roster. Here’s how you can join.

When Deb and Joe Patterson moved to rural Greenfield in the late 1980s, the former Ocean City residents found the isolation hard to take – at first.

“I’m the Lucy and Ethel type,” says Deb – the kind of person who likes to run next door to borrow a cup of sugar, have a cup of coffee, or just chat.

Her neighbors now can’t do any of those things – they are possum and frogs, white-tailed deer and skunks, raccoons and possums. But Deb Patterson’s grown accustomed to the peace and quiet at her home near Cedar Swamp Creek. As she says, “I wouldn’t live anywhere else now.”

The rise of the eco-friendly burial

This ‘back-to-the-earth movement’ does away with embalming and even coffins

Until the early 20th century, the majority of Americans died at home, in their beds, in the company of their families. After death, the family anointed the body, sat by it for a period of mourning, then carried it to a final resting place, which sometimes was literally the “family plot.” The container of choice usually was a rough-hewn wooden box, and the dear departed left this world most naturally, with little preparation beyond washing and dressing and a little sprucing up. Oftentimes families even dispensed with the coffin, and put their loved ones in the ground wrapped only in a burial cloth.

Your favorite shades say something about your personality

What’s your favorite color? For most people, the answer is blue. Researchers have found that about 40 percent of those surveyed like blue best, followed (at a distant second) by purple.

It makes sense: the colors of sea and sky dominate our landscape, and surround us in every waking moment. Blue symbolizes tranquility, and our most familiar representations of heaven are blue and white. Other beautiful blues include blueberries, hydrangeas, robins’ eggs, Delft pottery, and (my all-time favorite) Paul Newman’s eyes.

Sometimes they’re just sunning; sometimes, they’re stranded and need help

The April 3 sighting of a harp seal on Ocean City’s 15th Street beach created plenty of excitement among boardwalkers and beachgoers.

The adult mammal soon attracted a crowd, and some people worried that it was lost or injured. Fortunately, this seal was just enjoying a siesta, and after an hour or two of sunbathing, it waddled back into the surf.

While seals are not an everyday sight on local beaches, they’re not unheard of. So how to tell if a seal is safe or in danger? And what’s the proper etiquette when you see one?

These pesky birds have lessons to share on love and unity

Canada geese are commonplace in New Jersey, and boy, can they be annoying. Each adult produces several pounds of goose poop per day, and the flocks are capable of turning parks, golf courses and sports fields into sludge piles.

The geese also pose a threat to air travel; it was a flock of Canada geese that sent a US Airways jet into the Hudson River in 2009.

But these birds also are a marvel of avian cooperation. In flight, flocks assume the classic ‘V’ formation, in which different members periodically take the lead to prevent individuals from tiring. And these geese, which can be so aggressive toward people, also offer a good example of cooperative parenting and heartwarming devotion.

Myths and mysteries of the olfactory sense

In his great work, “In Search of Lost Time,” also known as “Remembrance of Things Past,” the French writer Marcel Proust cited the role of the senses in our most vivid memories: “When nothing else subsists from the past, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls bearing resiliently on tiny and almost impalpable drops of their essence.”

In the past few weeks, watching the world slowly shake off its winter torpor, I’ve spent lots of time anticipating the sweet aromas of spring—growing grass and flowers, and the scent of the earth itself, nearly ripe for its reproductive rite.

Despite recent snow, the “spring-watch” has begun

Some years ago, I worked at a newspaper in Philadelphia, and each year the change from winter to spring was always marked by one or two readers sending in pictures of “the first robin of the season.”

These submissions really annoyed the editor. Invariably, he’d bark, “Don’t these dopes know that robins spend the winter right here? We are not running photos of robins!”