An Island of Nature

     One afternoon early in June I spent 40 minutes in a forty-acre (my estimation) island of nature completely surrounded by heavily-traveled roads in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  I was between appointments and sat in my car along a dead-end road, with little traffic, that paralleled the Route 30 expressway and well-traveled Good Road and Harrisburg Avenue just west of Lancaster City.  Although the land along those roads was developed, that island of nature on a floodplain along the Little Conestoga Creek was full of interesting plants and animals.  Its pastures, trees and hedgerows were a remnant of the farmland habitat that prevailed here before development.
     A loose flock of about 20 bachelor Canada geese walked slowly across a meadow, plucking and ingesting grass as they went.  Those stately geese weren't yet old enough to pair off and raise goslings, so they stayed together for mutual protection.
     The whole time I was parked there, about a dozen barn swallows wove back and forth in flight low to the pasture to snap up flying insects.  They mostly zipped among the geese as they fed on grass because those big birds stirred insects from the grass as they walked.  The geese and swallows together in that meadow were picturesque and entertaining to me. 
     American robins ran over that same pasture in pursuit of earthworms and other invertebrates, adding more interest to that grassy habitat.  They probably just finished raising young in grass and mud nurseries in the younger trees of the hedgerows.
     I saw a pair each of gray catbirds and northern cardinals in a thicket of a hedgerow that bordered the pasture near where I was parked.  These birds nest in the thickets and there probably were other pairs of each of those bird species raising young in nearby hedgerows of young trees and shrubbery.
     A pair of Canada geese and their eight, quarter-grown goslings that I had not seen earlier, suddenly came off a lawn near where I was parked and walked briskly down the road toward me.  One parent was in the lead and the other brought up the rear of their little caravan, with the youngsters between them, as geese do when escorting their young from place to place.  I could see by their cautious actions and postures, that the parent geese understood the potential danger of a vehicle newly-parked on the road.
     And while I was parked along that quiet road and enjoying the geese and swallows still careening low over the meadow after flying insects, a cottontail rabbit scampered across the road in front of me and a gray squirrel whisked up a larger tree in the nearby hedgerow.  I knew in spite of the traffic and development around it, this green, peaceful island of nature harbored more wildlife than was visible at the moment, including striped skunks, red foxes, red-tailed hawks, and mallard ducks and muskrats along the creek, and other, more common species.  And being close to development, hunting and trapping would not be allowed in this peaceful island of nature. 
     Natural oases like this, wherever they may be, are essential for wildlife, and us.  The animals have a home and we have places to relax and enjoy the beautiful and inspiring outdoors in relative peace.