Today, September 14, 2015, I drove through a section of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania farmland to see what wildlife was active and visible. The day was a clear, cool, blustery one, reminding me of weather in October. I wasn't seeing anything that caught my attention until I crossed a bridge over the beginning section of the clear-flowing Conestoga River where it is about the size of a creek. There, in a broad, sunny cow pasture, I saw several each of migrant tree swallows and barn swallows cruising swiftly, back and forth over the water after flying insects, and a small patch of tall Jerusalem artichoke plants with several yellow flowers and two south-bound monarch butterflies sipping nectar from those blossoms. All that beauty at once caught my attention and I stopped for about an hour to observe it more closely.
Both species of attractive swallows were so fast on the wing that they were hard to follow. They mostly hunted flying insects on the lee side of the bridge where the insects were escaping the worst of the wind, but not being eaten by the swallows.
The golden artichoke (which is really a kind of wild sunflower) blooms were attracting several each of cabbage white and yellow sulphur butterflies, as well as a few monarchs. Those actively fluttering butterflies, that were fighting into the wind to get to the flowers, made those blooms the more interesting and attractive.
There were several other kinds of flowering plants that flourish best in moist soil growing along the banks of the Conestoga River, including bur-marigolds with their yellow blooms, spotted jewelweeds with their orange flowers, arrowheads that had white blossoms and a few plants of purple loosestrife with their pink blooms. The bur-marigold and loosestrife blossoms also had several cabbage white and sulphur yellow butterflies flitting around and on them to sip nectar.
Chicory that had blue flowers and evening primrose with their yellow blooms inhabited higher, drier back corners of the meadow. Several milkweed plants each had a few seed-swollen pods in those pasture corners. And a few of those pods already opened and were releasing their fluff-parachuted seeds in the wind. Each seed hung from its white fluff as it floated away on the wind. Clumps of dead teasel flower heads poked above the surrounding green vegetation. And big-as-bushes pokeweed plants, in those same corners, were dangling with deep-purple, juicy berries that will be food for robins, bluebirds and waxwings this winter.
I saw a few song sparrows among the primrose, milkweed and poke plants. At this time those sparrows probably are mostly eating a variety of invertebrates. But later in autumn and through winter, they will be consuming weed and grass seeds among the tall vegetation of this pasture.
While I was there, a few different kinds of water birds, herons, an egret and sandpipers, were wading in the shallows of the Conestoga to get food. Two post-breeding great blue herons and a great egret spaced themselves in the water as they watched for fish and other aquatic critters to eat. And all of those long-legged, long-necked birds were successful in catching at least two fish each and gulping them down head-first and whole.
A few least sandpipers poked their beaks into mud under inch-deep water after a variety of invertebrates. They, like most of their kin, are migrants from the Arctic tundra where they nested. They are on their way to the southern United States and northern South America to avoid the northern winter, but must stop occasionally to "refuel".
I saw a nice variety of pretty and interesting plants and animals in a meadow in an hour's time. Anyone can do the same just by being outdoors and watching for the possibilities wherever one may be, even close to home.
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