Blue-gray Gnatcatchers

Blue-gray gnatcatchers are tiny birds with a big bag of characteristics that resemble those of other bird species. They are constantly on the move like warblers, and catch flying insects in mid-air like flycatchers. They have long tails they hold erect like wrens do and twitch sideways like northern mockingbirds and gray catbirds. And the feather on each edge of their tails is white like those of dark-eyed juncos.

But in their own right, gnatcatchers are handsome birds in a plain way. They are blue-gray on top, white below with a white ring around each eye. But they are hard to spot because of their small size, camouflaged plumages and dwelling among the foliage of deciduous trees.

I'm cute!

Each pair of gnatcatchers raise up to eight young in two broods per summer in bottomland woods and thickets in the eastern United States. They winter in Mexico, Central and South America. They arrive at their breeding territories around the middle of April, depending on the weather.

Gnatcatcher nests are dainty, beautiful constructions made of plant fibers and tiny shreds of bark. The insides of their nurseries are lined with soft seed fluff and the outsides are decorated with pale-green lichens and tiny bits of bark. The nest is held together and tied to a fork of tree twigs with spider silk and/or caterpillar webbing. Those cradles are hard to notice because they are small, high in trees and camouflaged. But some get blown out of their perches by storms and strong wind. Then their unique beauty can be admired on the ground.

Gnatcatchers are lovely little birds and their nests are unique and beautifully constructed. Each is a joy to experience.

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher by Andy Reago and Chrissy McClarren ~ flickr

Birds in Harvested Grain Fields

One afternoon in early August I was driving in Lancaster County, through a manicured cropland with few trees and no hedgerows. A large flock of mourning doves perched on wires between power towers caught my eye. While I watched, most of those doves flew, group after group, to a nearby field. I drove to that field and saw the doves landing among grain stubble and newly-sprouted plants. I counted over 300 of them, both young of the year and adults, as they walked about to picked up grain missed by the automatic harvester. And there were scores each of rock pigeons, purple grackles and starlings, mature birds and youngsters of every species, also eating grain in that field. The grackles and starlings would also have been ingesting any invertebrates they found as well. And over a dozen barn swallows and a few purple martins continually swooped low over those birds foraging in the field to snap up small insects stirred into the air by the doves and other birds.

Occasionally the hundreds of doves and scores of pigeons, grackles and starlings abruptly took flight at once, swirled over that field in mixed groups, landed into the wind onto the same field and immediately began feeding. The suddenness of those feathered routs and the numbers of birds flying together made them interesting to watch.

Horned Lark with an Attitude?

The adaptable birds discussed above, plus the equally adaptable killdeer plovers and horned larks regularly feed on seeds and invertebrates in croplands. The plovers and larks nest on bare ground fields and patches of gravel, as well as glean invertebrates from all fields around their respective nests.

The pigeons and barn swallows raise young in barns and under bridges. Purple martins hatch eggs in apartment bird house erected in many barnyards especially for them. The doves and grackles rear offspring in grassy nests in trees, particularly in planted, half-grown conifers. And starlings hatch babies in any crevice they can find, whether natural or human-made. But all these birds feed in fields near their nurseries, including harvested grain fields.

Obviously, all these bird species have adapted to human-made niches for feeding and nesting. Our activities have increased their feeding and nesting potentials, increasing their numbers. These birds happened onto a good thing and they take full advantage of it. They create communities of wildlife where otherwise there would not be any. And that is their main interest to me. I find it pleasurable to know that many species of wildlife adapt to what we do as a society, to their benefit. This is only one example of that. 

Horned Lark by Greg Schechter @ flickr.com

Beautiful Beetles

There are many species of beetles throughout the world. In fact, they are some of the most abundant insects on Earth. Some kinds are beneficial to humans, while others are not, depending on the type. Most have hard wing covers that also protect their softer abdomens. And it's those wing covers that give many species of beetles their beauty.

Several kinds of beautiful beetles inhabit various niches in Lancaster County and are visible during summer months. Some of those attractive beetles locally include ladybird beetles, red milkweed beetles, dogbane beetles, six-spotted green tiger beetles, Colorado potato beetles, locust borers and Eastern eyed click beetles.

Beautiful Beetle Buddies

Ladybird beetles and red milkweed beetles are red on top with dark dots on their wing covers. Popular among many people for a variety of reasons, ladybird beetles and their larvae are predatory, sucking the juices from aphids and other small, soft insects they find on the stems of bushes, stinging nettles and other kinds of plants on lawns and in thickets.

Red Milkweed beetles, as their name implies, suck the white sap from common milkweed plants in fields and along roadsides. These beetles lay their eggs on milkweed stems at the ground level. The larvae chew into those stems, overwinter in the perennial roots and pupate in spring. The adult beetles emerge from the soil in summer, climb up milkweed stalks to suck sap and complete their life cycle in fall.

Dogbane beetles and Six-spotted Green Tiger beetles are mostly green, which camouflages them. Dogbanes are a half-inch long and metallic green, orange and purple. They sip the sap of dogbane plants, which are related to milkweeds. Dogbane plants grow in sunny habitats, such as roadsides and the edges of woods and thickets. Dogbane eggs are laid on the ground or on the dogbanes. The youngsters dig into the soil to feed on dogbane roots and pupate. In summer they emerge as adults ready to breed.

Tiger beetle species are predatory, feeding on small insects and spiders they track down like wolves on relatively bare soil. This species is about an inch long and mostly green on top, with six white spots on their wing covers, three on each one. Female tigers lay eggs singly on bare ground. The predatory, S-shaped larvae dig vertical burrows where they drag in victims to eat, eventually pupate and emerge as adults the next summer. Adults have long legs on which they quickly run down prey.

Colorado Potato beetles and Locust Borers are colorful beetles. The potato beetles have dark and white stripes running lengthwise on their wing covers. This species eats the foliage of potatoes and wild species of nightshades in sunny habitats. Females lay eggs on the undersides of leaves, which the larvae consume. Then they drop to the ground and burrow in a bit to pupate, emerging later as pretty adults.

Locust borers are a striking black and yellow striped. As their name indicates, their young live and feed on the sapwood of black locust trees, which grow along hedgerows in local farmland. Adult borers ingest goldenrod pollen and nectar, also in farmland, and pollinate the flowers in the process.

Female borers slice pits into locust bark and deposit eggs one at a time in those cuts. The larvae dig inward, eat sapwood and pupate under the bark. The adults come out of the bark late in summer ready to mate and lay eggs.

Eastern Eyed Click beetles live under logs and fallen leaves on forest floors. Adults are mottled-gray all over for camouflage, and have large, black, fake "eyes" on the upper sides of their thoraxes that make them appear larger and fierce. But that mimicry to fool predators is also beautiful to human eyes.

Click beetles are named for the clicking we hear when they abruptly flip themselves upright by snapping a spine under the thorax into a groove. Adults have elongated and flat bodies for slipping under sheltering objects on woodland floors. They consume leaves on forest floors. Their larvae, called wireworms, live in the soil and rotting logs where they ingest roots, seeds and other insects.   

Female eyed click beetles lay eggs in the soil. The young grow slowly and pupate in the protective ground or rotting wood. They emerge as adults the following summer.

These are all lovely beetles in Lancaster County. When out in summer, the reader may happen across some of these beautiful insects.

Red Milkweed Beetles by Denise Krebs, Orange City, IA

Streambank Fencing

Stream bank fencing excludes cattle, horses and other farm animals from waterways so they don't break down the soil banks and eliminate bodily waste into the water, keeping waterways healthy. And stream bank fencing is an asset to several kinds of wildlife because of the shelter and food they provide to those creatures, particularly in summer.

When farmland brooks, streams and creeks are fenced in, farmers have a hard time mowing the vegetation growing between the fences and water. Some species of those plants grow tall, creating long, but lean, human-made wildlife habitats.

Where stream banks are high because of the eroding effect of the current over time and not crumbled under large hooves, belted kingfishers and rough-winged swallows dig nesting tunnels in those banks to raise young. The kingfishers catch banded killifish and other small fish while the swallows feed on flying insects in the surrounding farmland.

That's a Red-winged Blackbird Nest in There?

Reed canary-grass grows densely and up to ten feet high along many waterways in southeastern Pennsylvania. This grass of moist ground is a wonderful shelter for nesting red-winged blackbirds, song sparrows, Canada geese and mallard ducks. Female red-wings build grassy cradles among the grasses above the ground or water. The song sparrows, mallards and Canadas, however, make nests on the ground at the base of thick growths of this grass.

Green-backed herons, great blue herons and black-crowned night herons hide in and move stealthily through that concealing tall grass as they stalk carp, bluegill sunfish and banded killifish in shallow water. Blue damselflies and a small variety of dragonflies perch on grass leaves hanging over the water to watch for insect prey and mates. Northern water snakes and snapping turtles hide among grasses fallen into the water so they can ambush fish. Bull frogs and green frogs hide at the base of the grass to escape the notice of the herons and raccoons. These frogs spawn in the slower parts of waterways, as well as in ponds. And muskrats hide among the grasses, eat them and use them to make nests for their babies in burrows they dig into the stream banks.

Multiflora rose and other kinds of shrubs, and a variety of young, riparian trees, including ash-leafed maples, silver maples, sycamores, black walnuts and others, provide cover for other kinds of creatures. Some of the birds that nest in streamside shrubbery include permanent resident song sparrows, northern cardinals and American goldfinches and summering gray catbirds, indigo buntings and common yellow-throated warblers. The goldfinches feed on weed and grass seeds, but the rest of these birds consume invertebrates.

As some of the trees get older and larger, other kinds of birds, including Baltimore orioles, orchard orioles, eastern kingbirds and cedar waxwings nest among the twigs of those trees. These birds ingest invertebrates, but in different niches and in different ways. The orioles eat invertebrates among the leaves and twigs of the trees while the kingbirds and waxwings catch insects in mid-air.

Some farmers erect wood duck and eastern bluebird nest boxes on the trees and fence posts of stream bank fencing to entice wood ducks, that are attracted to waterways in woods, and bluebirds to those habitats for nesting. And natural cavities form in those trees from wind ripping the limbs off, the weight of ice or snow breaking them, or downy woodpeckers, red-bellied woodpeckers and northern flickers — which is another kind of woodpecker, chipping out nesting hollows in dead branches. Wood ducks, and a few pairs of bluebirds nest in those nest boxes and tree cavities, but pairs of tree swallows do as well. In fact, little gangs of tree swallows sometimes chase out a lone pair of bluebirds and use the bluebird house themselves for rearing offspring.

Young woodies eat invertebrates while their mothers feed on seeds and other vegetation. The bluebirds and tree swallows ingest invertebrates, the bluebirds from the plants and the swallows in the air.

Stream bank fencing is a blessing to a variety of wildlife. It gives them more sheltered living space which bolsters their populations. And the vegetation and wildlife using it make stream bank fencing enjoyable to us.

Nest of Red-Winged Blackbird, Sand Hill Road dsc_0196 by putneypics

Dodder

Dodder is an intriguing, miraculous little plant that doesn't even look like a plant. It resembles large tangles of pale-orange string or cooked, thin spaghetti strung limply over green vegetation in bottomland thickets, like the work of a jokester.

Dodder is a common species in the morning glory family, a family of plants noted for their large, showy, colorful flowers. But dodder is a strange morning glory. It has no chlorophyll to make it green, and to make its own food for growth like green plants do by combining hydrogen in water and carbon dioxide in the air, a process called photosynthesis, which is powered by sunlight. Without chlorophyll, dodder has become parasitic, taking its nourishment from other plants that it attaches itself to.

Dodder grows from minute seeds on the soil's surface and is adapted to growing toward nearby plants, a process called chemosensory clues. Somehow the young plants sense that vegetation is close by. The thin stem of each little plant attaches itself to a green plant, wraps around that vegetation and penetrates it with tiny projections that draw sugar-laden sap from the host plants, which is food for the dodder. When the dodder starts taking nutrition from the host plants, its roots in the ground die, and the dodder is totally parasitic on the hosts, with no connection to the soil. It's hard to imagine how dodder developed its parasitic lifestyle. But there are several kinds of dodder in the tropics where parasitic plants are numerous, living in the trees with no connection to soil. Perhaps competition for space and sunlight forced these plants to find other ways of getting nourishment, and eventually had no direct need for soil, and sunlight in the case of dodder.

Dodder grows quickly and soon its many slender, flexible stems, and their leaves that are reduced to minute, pale-orange scales, are draped over several neighboring plants. Some of the green host plants that manufacture food for both themselves and the dodder are weakened by the dodder draining their sugary sap. The dodder is like a cancerous growth. It is a parasite.

Dodder produces many clusters of tiny, white, waxy flowers that produce minute seeds in abundance. Those blossoms bloom from July into October. Their tiny seeds eventually get scattered across the ground where some of them will sprout in spring and try to find vegetation to crawl up.

Look for masses of light-orange dodder strung over vegetation in thickets, particularly later in summer when many tiny flowers are visible. It is an unusual plant.