Fall Thickets

     Thickets of shrubbery, vines and young trees in hedgerows between fields and woodland edges in the croplands of the mid-Atlantic States have many beauties in October and November, and through the coming winter.  Those beauties include colored leaves, flowers, berries and various kinds of animals.
     Thickets of bushes and vines grow dense because they receive ample sunlight each sunny day.  And they provide abundant food and shelter for a variety of farmland wildlife through the year, which helps make those thickets more interesting.
     Some of the most striking fall foliage in thickets is on poison ivy and Virginia creeper vines, pokeweed, and staghorn sumac and sassafras trees.  Those leaves brighten the thickets like no other vegetation can.  Poison ivy and sassafras have red, yellow and orange foliage in October, while the other plants have red leaves.
     Goldenrods with their tiny, yellow flowers and asters with white or pale-lavender blooms continue to blossom into October.  Those lovely flowers are the last major source of nectar for a variety of insects, including bumble bees and pearl crescent butterflies.
     Several kinds of plants in thickets present brightly colored, pretty berries in October and through winter.  They include Virginia creepers, poke and grape with their deep-purple fruits, multi-flora rose bushes and staghorn sumacs that have red berries, tear-thumb vines with their pale-blue berries and crab apple trees that have red or yellow fruits, depending on the kind of tree.  Some of those fruits are brightly colored so birds can find them to eat them.
     Berries and fruit in thickets in this area provide abundant food for several kinds of birds and mammals wintering in those human-made habitats.  Mammals that consume various kinds of fruit in fall and winter in this area include a variety of rodents, foxes, coyotes, raccoons, opossums, skunks, white-tailed deer, black bears and others.  Birds that ingest them include northern mockingbirds, American robins, eastern bluebirds, cedar waxwings, starlings and several other species.  Those lovely birds eat the berries, digest the pulp, but pass the seeds in their droppings as they travel across the landscape.  Thus, many kinds of plants are spread over the countryside.
     Permanent resident song sparrows and northern cardinals and wintering white-throated sparrows, fox sparrows and dark-eyed juncos eat weed and grass seeds in thickets.  These small birds also add interest and beauty to those habitats in autumn and winter.
     Resident Carolina chickadees, tufted titmice, white-breasted nuthatches, blue jays, downy and red-bellied woodpeckers, and Carolina wrens and wintering golden-crowned kinglets and yellow-rumped warblers also winter in deciduous thickets, as they do in woods.  There they consume hibernating invertebrates and their eggs hidden away in bark crevices and dead wood.
     Cottontail rabbits, wood chucks, gray squirrels and white-footed mice are vegetarian mammals that live in thickets.  Chucks dig burrows in the ground to live in, and hibernate through winter.  Abandoned chuck holes, however, are good homes for rabbits, red foxes, coyotes, skunks, opossums and other types of mammals that live in hedgerows and woodland edges.
     Thickets in hedgerows and woodland edges harbor many kinds of lovely and adaptable plants and animals during fall and winter.  Get out sometime to experience thickets of shrubs, vines and young trees in your neighborhood.