Unexpected Migrants, Two

     In the afternoon of September 27th, I again drove by that one-acre pasture that was about one quarter flooded and discussed in my blog article, "Unexpected Migrants".  I was there about a half hour on the 27th and noticed that the populations of creatures there shifted in just a few days, which regularly happens during times of migrations.
     A few twelve-spotted dragonflies were still skimming low over the water for flying insects to eat, and now there were about 20 lesser yellowlegs wading in the shallow water after invertebrates, which is an increase in their numbers from a few days ago.  The least sandpipers, apparently, were gone but about a three dozen killdeer plovers waded the shallows to get invertebrates.  And I noticed about a dozen migrant tree swallows hawking rapidly about 20 feet above the water and meadow to catch flying insects.  Occasional flocks of these striking swallows have been passing through Lancaster County, Pennsylvania on their way south since around the middle of August.    
     While I was watching that partly inundated pasture, a half dozen steers walked into the pool, scaring the yellowlegs and killdeer into swift flight on swept-back, powerful wings.  The long-legged yellowlegs formed a small group and circled the water a few times before settling into it again away from the cattle.  A few of the killdeer also dropped to the shallows, but most of them flew across a country road and landed in a 20-acre, bare ground field that recently had been harvested of corn and cultivated, perhaps for a crop of winter rye.  
     Killdeer have adapted to living and nesting inland, on bare ground fields, gravel parking lots and similar, human-made habitats.  They, their eggs and young are camouflaged on such exposed niches, which protects them from predators. 
     The killdeer, being brown on top, seemed to disappear the instant they touched down on the bare ground of the field across the road from the pasture.  Happy to see a gathering of so many killdeer, I scanned the field with my 16 power binoculars to better see them, and to learn if any other creatures were on that denuded soil.  There were!
     As I scanned the harvested and cultivated field, I spotted a stately golden plover in winter plumage among the killdeer plover, then another golden and another.  After searching that field for a few minutes, I saw six handsome golden plovers in winter plumage, which is brown mostly, with dark and yellow markings.  They, too, were well camouflaged on the soil as they reached down here and there to pick up invertebrates from it.         
     Golden plovers nest on the treeless Arctic tundra of Alaska and Canada and spend the northern winter on the grassy pampas of southern South America.  Many of them stop on bare ground fields, recently harvested hay fields, sod farms, golf courses and short-grass meadows through much of the Lower 48 United States.  There they consume lots of invertebrates for the next part of their migrations south.
      All those creatures, except some of the killdeer, were migrants passing through Lancaster County on their way farther south.  Migrants add spice to a nature lover's life because many of them come from far away and will spend the winter, or summer, in some distant land.  They are nature's ambassadors.