Pasture Bogs in March and April

     Shallow puddles and trickles of water among tussocks of grass in the low spots of short-grass cow pastures in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania farmland, as elsewhere, harbor more bird life in March and April than during any other time of the year, making them interesting.  Permanent resident birds are always there, and wintering birds are still there, but now certain migrants are around those meadow pools as well.  
     Wilson's snipe, which is a type of inland sandpiper, and American pipits, a small, sparrow-sized bird,  live around those percolating, running rivulets through winter and into spring.  There they catch invertebrates from the mud along the moving water that doesn't freeze, the snipe in the mud and the pipits from the surface of that same mud.  Both species are brown and streaked to blend into their surroundings, making them invisible until they move or fly.  Snipe have long beaks for poking under the mud for food, while pipits have short, thin ones for snaring food on top of mud.  The pipits pump their tails a bit as they walk along looking for food.
     Mallard ducks and Canada geese are also in boggy spots of meadows in winter and early spring to feed on vegetation kept ice and snow-free by the water.  The mallards consume aquatic vegetation mostly, while the geese graze on lush, tender grass.  Some of those ducks and geese settle down to nesting by early March in or near those pastures and the ducklings and goslings hatch in the latter couple of weeks in April.  Some of those newly-hatched broods return to boggy pastures to feed, the ducklings on invertebrates and the goslings on vegetation.
     Red-winged blackbirds return to wet meadows in March, the males several days ahead of the females.  Male red-wings are black all over with red shoulder patches.  They stand on top of cattails, weed stems, twigs or other tall vegetation to sing their songs that sound like "kon-ga-ree" and feed on invertebrates among the grasses.  Female red-wings come to those boggy pastures as cattails and reed canary-grass grow taller.  They will eventually build grassy cradles among the stems of cattails or tall grass about half way up the stalks.
     Killdeer plovers, which is a kind of inland shorebird, purple grackles and American robins also stalk invertebrates in wet meadows, including around the puddles of shallow water themselves.  The killdeer will eventually hatch four young per pair on nearby gravel parking lots and plowed fields.  Soon after the fuzzy, opened-eyed chicks hatch, their parents usher them around, including in wet pastures, to look for invertebrate food.  The grackles and robins hatch young in grass and mud cradles in trees, the grackles mostly in conifers and the robins mostly in young deciduous ones.
     Migrant pectoral and least sandpipers, and greater and lesser yellowlegs, are some of the sandpiper species that feed from low, watery spots in pastures during much of April before pushing farther north to their nesting grounds.  Like most sandpipers, these species are camouflaged and poke their long beaks into mud to pull out a variety of invertebrates.             
     But snipe dominate those grassy springs and trickles in meadows through winter and into April each year, though most people never know they are there.  Snipe are about the size of robins, but chunkier and with longer bills for probing into mud under shallow water for invertebrates.  They wade in the shallow water, rapidly poking their beaks up and down like the needle of a sewing machine to seize worms, aquatic insects, snails and other tiny creatures.
     Snipe migrate in April and form congregations of up to 60 or more individuals in some wet meadows, greatly increasing the populations of those that wintered there.  But they usually are not seen until they fly over the pastures, and disappear again when they drop among the short grass, puddles and rivulets of pastures.  Each snipe feeds almost constantly to gain fat reserves and strength for its annual spring trip north to rear offspring. 
     Then there comes a day in April when the snipe are gone, almost overnight.  They rapidly move north on strong, swept-back wings to the northern border states, most of Canada and all of Alaska where they will hatch another generation of young.
     Watch the wet spots of short-grass meadows in Lancaster County, and beyond, during winter and into spring to see the birds discussed above.  They make those pastures, and farmland in general, more interesting.