Birds in a Winter Woodlot

     There is a bottomland, deciduous woodlot with a stream flowing through just a mile south of New Holland, Pennsylvania.  In winter it seems barren of bird life at first glance, but it isn't.  I spent an hour at a time, four times along a country road on the edge of that woods in January and saw several kinds of wintering birds in it. 
     The usual small, woodland birds were there, including Carolina chickadees, tufted titmice, white-breasted nuthatches, downy woodpeckers, red-bellied woodpeckers and blue jays.  All those birds of each species was attractive in its own way and all but the jays were camouflaged in the gray of winter woods.  The chickadees and titmice were in a small, mixed group of both kinds roaming among the trees seeking dormant invertebrates and their eggs in bark crevices and under scales of leaf buds.
     Woodpeckers chipped and pecked here and there on dead wood after invertebrates nestled in the wood.  Their sharp toe nails and stiff tail feathers held the birds upright on the tree bark as they foraged for food.   
     The nuthatch I saw walked down a tree trunk head first as it peered into cracks in the bark for invertebrates and their eggs.  All species of nuthatches are the only birds on Earth that can walk head first down upright tree trunks and limbs.
     Several types of seed-eating birds of the sparrow/finch family also wintered in that woodlot.  They included permanent resident northern cardinals, song sparrows, American goldfinches and house finches, and wintering dark-eyed juncos and white-throated sparrows, each species of which are quite beautiful.  These birds, but not all at once, were on the ground and weeds along the woods edge eating weed seeds.  Most of them, however, flew up into the shrubbery when an occasional vehicle went by. 
     A couple local members of the thrush family, American robins and eastern bluebirds, were also along the edge of this woodlot, one time each and not at the same time.  The robins were in a small, bordering pasture on a warm afternoon looking for invertebrates and anything else edible to them. They flew into the woods when traffic went by, but soon went back to the meadow to forage.
     The bluebirds were there to consume berries on multiflora rose bushes and poison ivy vines along the edge of the woods.  These birds paid no attention to the occasional passing vehicle.
     One afternoon, for a few minutes, I saw a red-tailed hawk circling the woodlot in search of gray squirrels that abound there.  And on another day, late in the afternoon, I heard the loud hooting of a mated pair of great horned owls that perched somewhere back in the woods.  What a thrilling wild sound that hooting was.
     But the highlights of this patch of woods I saw late one morning.  I noticed a slight motion along the stream, and looking at that spot with my 16 power binoculars, I was excited to see a hermit thrush picking up and eating invertebrates along the water's stony shore.  What a lovely and petite bird; warm-brown on top and white underneath with a dark-spotted chest.  The thrush ran about on its long, slender legs, stopping here and there to pick up an invertebrate, and sometimes pumping its rusty tail up and down slowly, as all members of its species do, perhaps as a communication.
     While watching the lovely thrush with my field glasses, a winter wren suddenly came into view.  Winter wrens are famous for wintering along streams in woods so I should not have been surprised to see it.  The wren was tiny, like a feathered mouse, warm-brown all over and constantly kept its short tail pointing upward.  It constantly hopped right along the stream, supposedly catching and ingesting tiny invertebrates still active because of the running, warming water.
     That little woodlot was rich with a variety of wintering birds.  Readers only have to get out to various habitats to see communities of wildlife as interesting as this one.