Surviving Flooded Meadows

     Close to an inch of rain fell on Lancaster County, Pennsylvania on February 16, 2016, which melted much of the snow.  The result of the rainfall and melting snow was overflowing waterways and many puddles in several meadows and fields in local cropland.
     Early in the afternoon of the 16th, as the rain was ceasing, I took a drive through some of the county's farmland to see the effects the slight flooding had on wildlife.  I saw about 50 Canada geese grazing on the pasture's short grass and around 100 mallard ducks milling about in the swollen stream in that meadow.  And there were a dozen rock pigeons walking over a nearby lawn and a pair of red-tailed hawks perched on a dead tree in the pasture. 
     Suddenly, one of the hawks left its perch and skimmed low across the meadow toward the stream.  I thought it was going to grab one of the mallards.  But the hawk overshot the waterway and landed on the grass beside the water.  Then it reached down with its beak and came up with a meadow mouse that it promptly swallowed headfirst and whole.  Apparently, the mouse was flooded out of its home and made vulnerable to predators.  But what really caught my attention was the mallards didn't fly away in fright.  In fact, they seemed curious about what the hawk was doing as they all paddled enough to hold their place in the stream where the hawk landed.
     As I moved on, the rain stopped, but fog developed where snow still covered the ground.  Warm, southerly breezes over cold snow created the fog that made the landscape all the more beautiful and interesting.
     The sky quickly cleared as I drove along.  And many puffy, cumulus clouds made the sky wild-looking, yet intriguing and attractive.
     As I passed another partly-inundated pasture with a swollen stream, I saw about 50 Canada geese, roughly 60 mallards and a few each of black ducks and American wigeon ducks.  Those birds were eating vegetation from the over-flowing brook, puddles and nearby, soggy fields.  And a muskrat, that was flooded out of its home, was wandering over a field, making it vulnerable to red-tailed hawks. 
     The last pasture I visited is many acres in size and straddles Mill Creek.  It, too, was partly flooded, and harbored a nice variety of birds, including hundreds of stately Canada geese, a score of snow geese, and a handful each of mallards, black ducks and common merganser ducks on the creek, in the puddles and on the soggy soil.  While I was there, several noisy flocks of Canada geese circled this pasture and finally floated down majestically into the wind to join their relatives on the spongy ground, where they rested, preened and socialized. 
     I saw a belted kingfisher perched on a limb by the creek as he watched the water for small fish to eat.  A great blue heron stood hunched on shore, apparently resting between fishing forays in the creek.  A flock of rock pigeons fluttered down to a puddle to drink while a scattered group of wintering American robins ran and stopped, ran and stopped across the short-grass meadow in search of earthworms and other invertebrates brought to the surface by the excess water in the ground.  And I saw another displaced muskrat meander across the pasture.  
     And I saw a magnificent adult bald eagle perched on a limb of a large tree along the creek in the back of the meadow.  I knew there was a large, bulky eagle nest of sticks in a huge sycamore tree by the creek.  When I looked at the stick cradle with 16 power binoculars, I saw the white head of another bald eagle on the nest, probably incubating an egg or eggs.
     Obviously, the water birds fared well in the slight flooding.  But mice and muskrats were made vulnerable to predators when they were flooded out of their homes in the grass and stream banks of inundated pastures. Weather, particularly, extreme weather, affects wildlife.  Wild creatures have to be adaptable and hardy to survive weather, predators and other problems they encounter in their daily lives.