I went on a short field trip near my home in New Holland, Pennsylvania on the warm, sunny afternoon of February 4, 2015. I didn't have a particular goal, but just wanted to experience what was happening in nature at the time.
I had just left town and was driving by a field when I noticed a few American robins in that field, then more and more. I stopped along the edge of the road and estimated a couple hundred robins were in that open space, probably feeding on invertebrates roused from the soil by the warmth. Were these migrant robins or were they in this area all winter. I know that each winter for years there has been about a score of robins in New Holland feeding on berries through winter. But this was a much larger flock of that species. If they were migrants, they are early because we usually see migrating robins early in March. My better guess is that they were around the New Holland area all winter, feeding on berries on trees and shrubbery in a relatively new suburban area on the edge of town.
Not a half mile down the country road I was on, I saw a flock of about 60 Canada geese eating grass in a pasture and about 50 mallard ducks on and beside Mill Creek that flows gently through that meadow. Though common and seen most everyday, those resident geese and ducks were a beautiful sight in that sunny, grassy pasture and sparkling, clear waterway. And while counting the ducks by the stream, I saw a great blue heron watching for fish in that waterway.
Continuing on that rural road, I went by a ten-acre patch of tall red juniper trees, with a few American holly and red maple trees in the mix. As I drove by slowly, I spotted a red-tailed hawk and then another one in the clear sky. I thought they could be a mated pair that has a nest somewhere in that juniper grove. I stopped to watch the red-tails and saw a third raptor of that kind come into view. One of the first hawks I saw dashed on powerful wing strokes after the third hawk, chasing it out of the area. That third red-tail probably was also looking for a nesting area and the first two hawks saw it as a competitor.
About a mile and a half out of New Holland, I turned around to drive home the way I came out. At that point, there is a 15 acre stand of maturing red maple trees on a bottomland along Mill Creek, with a border of weeds and grasses. A downy woodpecker chipped into a dead limb of a red maple after invertebrates in the wood. A little group each of dark-eyed juncos and American goldfinches fluttered among those weeds edging the woodlot and consumed many of their seeds. And about a half dozen eastern bluebirds, males and females, were catching small invertebrates that were activated by the warm sunlight. The bluebirds were particularly lovely when flashing their blue feathers in the sunlight.
On the way home, I stopped at a shallow rivulet of clear, running water to look for Wilson's snipe, which is a kind of inland sandpiper. I saw one a few yards from the road. As are all its kin, the snipe was dark brown, with beige and darker striping that allows those sandpipers to blend beautifully into their surroundings so well that they aren't visible until they move. This handsome snipe, as they all do, was busily poking its long beak into mud under the water to snare aquatic invertebrates.
I stopped at a thicket of sapling trees and cranberry viburnum bushes on the way home and saw a little gang of white-throated sparrows scratching in the leaves in their search for seeds and invertebrates to eat. White-throats nest farther north and only spend the winter in Lancaster County, as elsewhere in the eastern United States. They do, indeed, have a white throat that identifies them.
A northern mockingbird and a pair of northern cardinals were also in that thicket. The mocker was there to consume berries and the cardinals were there to ingest weed and grass seeds. Both these bird species are permanent residents and probably nest in that thicket.
As I was driving through farmland back to New Holland, I saw a group of about 20 wintering northern horned larks bounding low over a field, presumably from one feeding spot to another. But when they dropped to the ground, I couldn't see them because of their camouflaging plumages. Horned larks feed on weed and grass seeds and bits of corn left lying in the fields during winter. They actually live in those fields, hunkering down behind clods of soil at night to avoid cold winds.
And as I was approaching the meadow where the Canada geese were feeding a half hour earlier, I saw a flock of about 30 snow geese circling the fields ahead of me. I thought they might come down where the Canadas were feeding, but they didn't. In fact, the Canadas had left that meadow.
The snow geese were definitely migrants. They raise young on the Arctic tundra but come to many marsh and farmland places in the United States to spend the winter. Here they get food in abundance during that harshest of seasons. Those 30 snows were a prelude of the many thousands that will rest and feed in this county for a few weeks, waiting for spring to catch up to their restless hormones that push them north to breed.
The robins, too, were gone from the field they were in 40 minutes earlier. Perhaps they were full and quit feeding. Or maybe the were chased up by a Cooper's or sharp-shinned hawk. But the absence of the robins and geese in the last five minutes demonstrated that luck plays a role in what one experiences in nature. We have to be in the right place at the right time to experience much of nature. If we aren't, we think there isn't much wildlife in an area, when there's more than we know.
I was only out in nature for about 50 minutes and only drove a mile and a half from home, yet I saw a lot of nature for a winter day. Any reader can do the same. Just get out and look and, sometimes, much of nature will be seen or heard.
30 snow geese circling the neighboring fields.
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