Back Area Wildlife

     I had an hour and a half to kill during my dad's treatment at the health campus outside Lancaster City, Pennsylvania, so I went birding in a nearby, mostly unused place of short-grass lawns, patches of second-growth woods and a stretch of the Little Conestoga Creek.  A couple of shallow puddles sprawled across part of the lawns after recent heavy rains.  And that neglected site was surrounded by highways, expressways and buildings, making it an island of beautiful, peaceful nature and, hopefully, a good place to look for birds in spite of its position so close to human activities.
     As I parked along a road in this oasis of nature, the first birds I saw were three pairs of Canada geese wading through an inches-deep pool on a lawn.  Two pairs had four and five young respectively with them, but the third pair of Canadas were shepherding 22 goslings, of different sizes and, therefore, ages.  As Canada geese do, one adult was at the head of that long row of young geese and its mate brought up the rear of it.
     That group of 22 goslings was the biggest one of young geese I had ever seen.  Each goose only lays four to six eggs in a clutch, so that gang of geese must have been about four families of Canadas in one.  I have seen other large strings of goslings, but never one this big.  It was like a classroom of several children on a field trip, accompanied by two adults.  I don't know why or how one pair of Canada geese got so many young, but goslings feed themselves and only need to be warned of predators by adult geese, which is a minimum of maintenance.        
     Other kinds of birds were on that puddle on a lawn, including a pair of mallard ducks that seemed to be eating vegetation floating on the surface.  One spotted sandpiper and one solitary sandpiper patrolled an edge of the pool to catch invertebrates.  The spotty bounced and danced as it walked, which I think is a form of blending into the shorelines where its species gets food.  That sandpiper could nest locally, as its kind does across the Lower 48.  The solitary sandpiper was a migrant in this area as it was making its way north to Canada's forests to raise young.  Solitaries are the only sandpipers that hatch young in other birds' nurseries in trees.  All other sandpipers hatch offspring on the ground.  This solitary was refueling on invertebrates before continuing northward.
     I saw two great blue herons and a pair of rough-winged swallows along the Little Conestoga Creek.  The herons were hunched while standing picturesquely on a large tree fallen into the creek.  Those large herons were resting between fishing forays.  The rough-wings were zipping back and forth, low over the creek, while snapping up flying insects.
     Adaptable species of birds were feeding on invertebrates on the lawns.  Several each of American robins and gray catbirds repeatedly ran and stopped over the grass in search of food.  I don't think I ever saw so many catbirds in one spot before, probably because many of them were not sticking to dense cover.  A few each of purple grackles and starlings walked across the lawns to eat insects and other small critters they found among the blades and roots of the short grass.  And a handsome male northern flicker, which is a kind of woodpecker, probed here and there for ants in the soil, just below the grass roots. 
     A couple of gray squirrels and a few types of birds were in a small, harvested corn field adjacent to lawns and small clumps of trees and thickets.  The squirrels and birds, including three catbirds, one northern mockingbird and a northern cardinal were in that field at once and feeding on invertebrates, and corn kernels still on the ground.
     This whole neglected area was alive with gray squirrels, as evidenced by the ones rummaging across the lawns for food.  I suppose most of them live in nests of dead leaves they make in the rows and patches of deciduous trees, including silver and ash leafed maples, black walnuts and choke cherries, along the lawns in this natural place.  Those squirrels need to be constantly aware of the pair of red-tailed hawks that floated on high while I was there.
     Most any back area that has been neglected, though surrounded by human activities, is a good place for several kinds of wildlife to live and reproduce, as long as they stay off the roads.  All those back areas together add many more acres to wildlife habitats, some of which we can readily access.