For over three hours in a couple of successive afternoons early in January of this year, I sat in my car in an overgrown, quarter-acre clearing in a woodland outside of New Holland, Pennsylvania. That opening in the woods along the road, created by cutting out the large trees, looked like a good place for certain kinds of wintering birds and I stayed in the car to conceal my presence from the birds, and for warmth. In recent winters in woods around this clearing I had seen white-tailed deer, a red fox, wild turkeys and other creatures, and heard great horned owls.
This particular clearing was surrounded by tall, planted Norway spruce trees on two sides and deciduous woods, with mostly white oak trees, on the other sides. That open space was mostly choked with multiflora rose and black raspberry canes, matted-down, tall grass, and dead, but still-standing goldenrod stems. Pokeweed stalks, several bittersweet vines and one large staghorn sumac tree flaunted purple, orange and fuzzy-red berries respectively in that open place in the woods.
I wasn't in that clearing the first day more than a few minutes than a beautiful, male rufous-sided towhee appeared on top of a rose cane. He was shiny-black on top, with warm-brown flanks and white belly and chest. Within seconds another male towhee was visible, but both birds soon dove out of sight in the tangles of vegetation. I saw them the next day, however. Towhees eat weed seeds in winter.
I was thrilled to see those male towhees because I don't spot them often, especially in winter. Most go south for the winter, and when they are in Lancaster County to raise young, they are mostly out of sight.
Over the course of those few hours spent in that overgrown clearing in the woods, I spotted a few other kinds of pretty, interesting and adaptable birds, most of them small ones that live in woods and thickets. On the first day, a little band of Carolina chickadees foraged for insect eggs on plants in the clearing. And several seed-eating birds, including a pair of northern cardinals, a couple of song sparrows, and small groups each of wintering white-throated sparrows, tree sparrows and dark-eyed juncos, ate seeds from the dead goldenrod stalks and scratched on the ground for grass seeds.
The sumac tree with its innumerable, fuzzy red berries arranged in many pyramids was a magnet for a few kinds of berry-eating birds while I was there. A northern mockingbird was the first bird I noticed on the sumac during the first day. It ate a few berries then flew off. But the sumac was more interesting on the second day. Then two male northern flickers swept into the tree and hastily consumed some of its berries. Striking birds, I could see their white rumps and yellow wing feathers when they flew into the tree. And I noticed their black-speckled bellies, black "moustaches", one on each side of their face, and the red spot on the back of each of their heads. A bit later, a pair of eastern bluebirds were in the tree to ingest some of its berries. And still later, a small group of cedar waxwings were in it to eat its berries. Sometimes, these birds overlapped a bit, making the sumac tree even more intriguing and lovely to view. I estimated that sumac had enough berries to last the birds much of the winter.
I also saw a couple other, larger species of birds in tall white oak trees on the edge of this overgrown clearing. One was a pileated woodpecker that powered over the clearing and thumped upright at the base of a white oak where it chipped into the bark and dead wood after invertebrates.
The other birds were a couple of red-tailed hawks, maybe a mated pair because this is the time of their courting. One flew over the clearing carrying a small animal that it would eat. The other landed on a white oak at the edge of the clearing where it probably was watching for squirrels.
This was an interesting clearing in the winter woods, as many of them are in the Middle Atlantic States. The diversity of shelters and food sources in one small place creates that intrigue.
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