Winter Birds at Safe Harbor

     Several kinds of larger birds can be spotted each winter at Safe Harbor Dam on the Susquehanna River in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, especially when most of the rest of the river freezes.  In fact, the more frozen the rest of the river is, the more birds will be seen just below Safe Harbor and other dams along the river.  And each species has a reason for wintering there, making them predictable to see every winter.
     Water below the dam is always open because it tumbles through turbines to generate electricity and wells up below the dam with force, keeping the water from freezing.  Therefore, fish-catching birds and scavengers can make a living just below the dam when all other impoundments and much of the river is frozen.
     The Susquehanna River and Safe Harbor Dam are sandwiched between steep, wooded slopes that shelter the river and its birds to some extent.  The eastern hills are in Lancaster County while those on the west bank are in York County.  A parking lot at Safe Harbor Dam on the Lancaster County side offers easy access to this part of the river the year around. 
     Gulls are the most easily noticed birds along the Susquehanna because they are numerous there in winter, large and white underneath.  Three types are along the river- ring-bills, herrings and great black backs.  The black backs have black upper wings and backs, while the other two species are pale-gray above.  All the gulls can be spotted flying powerfully or floating gracefully in the air at all levels.  Or they may be resting on the water or perched in groups on boulders in mid-river.   
     Gulls catch small fish from the surface of water and scavenge dead fish they find floating on the water or washed up on a shore.  Black-backs also pirate fish from the smaller herring and ring-billed gulls whenever they can.
     A half dozen or more bald eagles, both adults and immatures, are spotted around Safe Harbor Dam.  They can be seen perched in trees on the slopes and the wooded river islands, or on power towers and mid-river boulders, or soaring magnificently in the sky.  But wherever noticed, they are always majestic. 
     Bald eagles catch large fish from the river, or pirate them from gulls.  And the eagles are devout scavengers, cleaning up dead fish, ducks, gulls or whatever other kinds of critters.
     Turkey vultures and black vultures specialize in scavenging.  Flocks of each species soar gracefully on high as they watch the ground for dead animals.  Turkey vultures have a good sense of smell and can sniff out dead animals.  Black vultures see carcasses from the air and also watch the turkey vultures for any sign of their floating to the ground or a shoreline after a dead animal. 
     Flocks of wintering American crows also scavenge dead animals they find and can keep from the vultures and eagles.  The crows are usually seen on the shores and boulders of the river where they scavenge dead animals and rest.
     Great blue herons are large birds, standing over four and a half feet tall.  They have long legs for wading in water and lengthy necks and beaks to reach out and snare fish of various sizes in their bills.  All fish are swallowed head-first and whole. 
     Flocks of black ducks and common merganser ducks also live on the river at Safe Harbor each winter.  Black ducks leave the river each evening at dusk to fly out to harvested corn fields where they shovel up waste kernels of corn.  The mergansers, on the other hand, stay on the Susquehanna where they dive under the surface to snare small fish in their serrated beaks that hold fast to the slippery prey.
    Rock pigeons live on the dam itself.  Pigeons are originally from rocky cliffs along the Mediterranean Sea in Europe and North Africa.  Wild pigeons are gray, which camouflages them on the rock walls.  To the birds at Safe Harbor, the dam is a cliff above a body of water. 
     A couple times a day, the pigeons leave the dam and go to fields in farmland where they ingest waste grain and seeds.  They make a porridge of those seeds to feed to their young on their nests.
     All the bird species discussed above have reasons for living at Safe Harbor Dam, as they do on any other dam.  And they make those dams and the rivers they block more interesting.