Having just finished my article in this blog titled BIRDS IN A SHELTERING WOODLOT, I remembered the birds I saw in an hour and a half's time one morning last week in a shallow, little valley in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania farmland. This small valley, with a brook running through it, harbors a cow pasture. The northwestern corner of this valley has a two-acre woodlot of large trees on a sheltering slope and the eastern edge of the valley is protected by an apple orchard on a hill. The pasture itself has a few thickets of multiflora rose and other shrubbery, and vines that offer protection to birds and other species of wildlife. A country road runs through this little hollow, giving it easy access.
Because of the woodlot, orchard and thickets in the meadow, there sometimes is a surprising diversity of bird species in this small valley, including in winter. Wintering woodland birds I saw there last week were a pair each of Carolina chickadees and tufted titmice, a white-breasted nuthatch, a downy woodpecker, a red-bellied woodpecker, a yellow-shafted flicker, four or five blue jays and a red-tailed hawk. All these species,except the flicker, are permanent residents.
The chickadees, titmice, nuthatches and various woodpecker species get invertebrate food from the trees in winter, but in different ways on different parts of the trees. The chickadees and titmice eat invertebrates and their eggs from the buds and twigs by walking about on them. Nuthatches probe for insects and their eggs in crevices in bark, while the woodpeckers chip away the bark of dead wood to drill into that wood to snare invertebrates.
Jays eat a lot of acorns and berries they find in woodlands and their edges. Jays also put acorns in the ground and tree hollows to eat in winter when food might be scarce. The striking jays I saw that winter morning last week were mostly drinking from and bathing in the flowing brook in the pasture.
The stately red-tail was perched high in a tree to watch for gray squirrels and white-footed mice in the woods. Red-tails prey on those rodents through the year.
Several kinds of small, seed-eating birds were in this sheltered valley because of the thickets of shrubs and vines that protect them from predators and the weather. They included little flocks of permanent resident house sparrows, house finches and American goldfinches, a couple pairs of resident northern cardinals and a couple of resident song sparrows. The male cardinals were striking, but their mates were just as pretty in a plainer way.
And there were little groups of two kinds of wintering, seed-eating species among the thickets, including white-throated sparrows and dark-eyed juncos. The white-throats have black and white striped crowns and white throat patches that identify them. The juncos are dark-gray above, white below and have two white outer tail feathers that form a white V when the birds fly. Both these species nest farther north than Lancaster County.
One or two individual, resident northern mockingbirds and, sometimes, a small group of eastern bluebirds are in this valley to consume berries from the multiflora rose bushes and other shrubbery.
The mockers try to defend "their" clumps of berry bushes from other bird species, but sometimes to no avail. The beautiful bluebirds are a delight to see in sunny meadows anytime, including in winter.
There are several of these partly-bushy pastures in sheltering, little valleys in the local area. They each have several types of birds in them in winter because of the protection they offer from cold wind and weather. Look for food, water and shelter together anytime of year when searching for birds. And it's fun not only to see the birds, but to know why they are where they are.
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