Late in the morning of October 24, 2015, I was sitting in our car in front of our house in New Holland, Pennsylvania waiting for my wife to come out. I briefly glimpsed, through the windshield, a large bird flying behind a tree in our neighborhood. When it came into view again a second later, I saw it was an adult bald eagle soaring up and up and away! That eagle might have been a migrant that perched overnight in a large tree and was continuing its migration. That eagle also reminded me of the bigger birds I have seen in this neighborhood over the last half-dozen years or a little more. One of those large birds in our neighborhood was a great blue heron that ate the goldfish in our 100 acre, backyard fish pond. I saw the heron fly low up the street one late afternoon early in March, circle our lawn and land in a tall Norway spruce tree in our back yard. A neighbor saw the heron, too, and asked if I had seen the heron standing by our fish pond a few days earlier. I said I didn't, but realized why our fish disappeared a few days ago. That great blue caught and ate them! Great blue herons are adaptable and it turns out many people lose goldfish to great blues.
A half-acre pond about a quarter mile from our home has had its share of water birds over the years, including mallard ducks and a score or more of majestic Canada geese off and on the year around for many years. The geese often rest on the pond because they probably feel safer there. But they fly, amid boisterous honking, to neighboring short-grass lawns, harvested corn fields and fields of winter rye to eat the vegetation there. But when danger threatens, they fly back to the pond, amid much bugling.
An immature tundra swan once spent November and the early part of December one winter on that pond. Like the geese, it twice daily flew out to the same fields to feed on waste corn kernels and the green shoots of grass and rye. And like the geese, this magnificent swan ran across the water while flapping its large wings to become airborne.
This grand-looking swan was hatched on the Arctic tundra and got separated from other tundra swans during its migration south for its first winter. But it seemed to be healthy and probably joined a group of its kin that winter somewhere in Lancaster County.
Sometimes, late in summer, a post-breeding great egret will stalk the shallows of this pond to catch small bluegill sunfish that form schools of themselves in the shallows away from bigger fish. These elegant birds are four and a half feet tall, and white with black legs and a yellow bill, making a beautiful picture on the edge of the pond.
New Holland also has at least three large, permanent resident birds of prey- red-tailed hawks, Cooper's hawks and great horned owls. The magnificent red-tails hunt gray squirrels, mice and other creatures the year around. In winter I see a few of them soaring majestically in to town from the fields and perch for the night in tall spruce trees where needles block the wind and cold to some extent. Sometimes, one lands in a tree on our yard for the night, or to look for squirrels and other prey.
At least one pair of Cooper's hawks has raised young in our neighborhood for several years. And we see a lightning-fast Cooper's or two in winter picking off mourning doves, house sparrows and other kinds of birds. We see the feathers falling to the ground as the Cooper's ingest their victims.
We mostly hear a pair of great horned owls hooting to each other at dusk or sometime in the night. A couple of times I have seen one or two of them perched on top of one of our large spruces, silhouetted against the sky. I see the owls better on cloudy nights when outdoor lights brighten the clouds, making the owls' silhouettes stand out more.
A pair of horned owls have a home base in a one-acre patch of pine woods that was planted many years ago a quarter mile from home on the east edge of New Holland. I think these are the same owls we hear at home and they probably raise one or two young every year in a stick nursery in one of those pines in that planted stand.
These large birds, and other species, can be spotted in towns and cities. One just has to think of the possibilities and get out and look for wildlife near home.
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