Wildlife in Sparse Shelter

     I like to watch places of limited food and sparse shelter for wildlife to see how adaptable life is and what it can adjust to.  Even seemingly barren human-made habitats are used by adaptable creatures.  In April and May of 2016, I occasionally studied a thin, intermittent hedgerow of trees, shrubbery and tall grasses and perennial plants between fields in cropland a mile north of New Holland, Pennsylvania.  That hedgerow also has a ditch that fills with water during a heavy or prolonged rain.  Though offering sparse food and shelter to wildlife, a surprising number of bird and mammal species live there.  These adaptable animals have a future because of their flourishing and raising young in less than ideal niches imposed by the works of people.
     Three species of small, cavity-nesting birds, including a pair of eastern bluebirds, a pair of Carolina chickadees and two pairs of tree swallows, and a pair of American kestrels, a pair of screech owls and a few gray squirrels live in that slender, quarter-mile-long hedgerow between fields because of cavities in large silver maple, black walnut and weeping willow trees and three bluebird nesting boxes.  The small birds hatch young in the bird houses and smaller hollows in the trees, while the kestrels, owls and squirrels rear offspring in the larger tree cavities. 
     Bluebirds catch insects by perching on tree twigs and fences and dropping to vegetation below.  Chickadees pick up tiny invertebrates from the bark, twigs and leaves of trees, while tree swallows snare and eat flying insects in mid-air.  Those different ways of getting food allow these species to live together without rivalry with each other.
     The kestrel and owl families are counterparts of each other when searching for field mice and other prey among the shrubbery and across neighboring fields.  The kestrels hunt by day and the owls do so at night, which reduces direct competition for the same prey animals.  
     I saw several American robins, a few mourning doves, a pair of blue jays, a pair of summering eastern kingbirds, a red-tailed hawk, a Cooper's hawk and a sharp-shinned hawk perched on tree limbs in that hedgerow this spring, but not all at once.  The hawks were watching for prey animals to catch. 
     Any and all of those bird species could nest on twigs or limbs in that slim row of trees.  The robins and kingbirds already do.           
     I also saw a variety of birds that nest in the bushes, vines and sapling trees in that hedgerow.  Those thicket birds include permanent resident song sparrows, northern mockingbirds, northern cardinals, house finches, American goldfinches and summering gray catbirds.  I most often hear those birds in the dense jungles of growth before I see them. 
     Thickets of shrubs and vines, though some of them are limited in size, provide great shelter for wildlife of many kinds, including mammals.  I have seen wood chucks, striped skunks, opossums, cottontail rabbits, little brown bats and big brown bats in the hedgerow I studied.  Bushes and vines give the land mammals cover and the ditch often provides them with water.  Presumably the bats perch in the trees for the day in summer.    
     Wood chucks are home builders.  They dig burrows in the soil with a few entrances so they are not trapped in their own homes.  But when chucks abandon their tunnels, other mammals, including red foxes, skunks, possums and rabbits, move into some of them.
      The hedgerow I studied close to home this spring was interesting.  It demonstrated how adaptable some critters are.  Those animals increase their populations because of their adjustments to less than ideal conditions, and we get to experience interesting wildlife close to home.  Readers can look for such habitats close to home to have similar experiences.