As I drove up to the southern edge of one of my favorite woodlots a mile outside New Holland, Pennsylvania in the middle of June, I saw a pair of eastern phoebes on dead twigs a few feet from the little, country bridge I was crossing and a gray catbird in inch-deep water of the stream the bridge spanned. I stopped my car and waited quietly inside to see what other creatures would appear. Any birds in that woodlot now would be nesters. But June is a tough month to watch for small, woodland birds because of the foliage and the birds' secrecy around their cradles and youngsters.
I stayed an hour on the edge of that 30-acre woodlot that first day and went back another three days in a row for an hour each trip. While there, I noted several animals of interest for a small patch of woods. And each species was where it belonged.
At one time or another, I saw several kinds of permanent resident woodland birds among the trees in those bottomland woods, including a pair of Carolina chickadees, a tufted titmouse, a white-breasted nuthatch and a downy woodpecker. I also heard a red-bellied woodpecker calling from the depths of the woods. Once, a handsome blue jay landed in a tiny, grassy clearing on the edge of the woods where I was parked and was eating something from the grass roots level. Another time, a male yellow-shafted flicker landed in that same opening to eat ants and other invertebrates on the ground. All the woodpecker species would be raising young in cavities they chipped into dead wood on limbs in that woodland.
I saw a permanent resident male American goldfinch, a song sparrow and a pair of northern cardinals, and a pair of summering gray catbirds among the shrubbery on the edge of the woods. Interestingly, the goldfinch, song sparrow, a catbird and a couple of purple grackles repeatedly waded in the inch-deep water to get food. The goldfinch ate alga while the song sparrow, catbird and grackles consumed invertebrates from the water. Those species were shore birds along that little stream in the woods. And, no doubt, the sparrows and catbirds were nesting in nearby shrubbery, but getting some of their food from the nearby and handy waterway.
The pair of phoebes had a nest on a support beam under the little bridge spanning the woodland waterway and were catching flying insects to feed to their young. Phoebes traditionally build mud and moss nurseries on rock ledges, under overhanging boulders near water in woods. To this pair of adaptable phoebes that bridge was a rock ledge under an overhanging boulder that protected their young well.
A few American robins, including a couple of spot-breasted young of the year, bathed in the shallows of the stream, vigorously dipping in the water and splashing it everywhere. Apparently, one or two pairs of robins nested on the edge of the woods, as this familiar species of thrush traditionally has done through its life history. Today, most robins raise offspring in young trees on lawns, reminescent of their nesting in saplings in woodland clearings before the coming of European colonists to North America.
A beautiful wood thrush, THEE bird of this woodlot, also bathed in the shallows of the stream at one point. Warm-brown on top, which camouflages this species on the dead-leaf litter of eastern North American forest floors, wood thrushes are white underneath, sprinkled with black spots. Occasionally, I could hear a wood thrush singing his flute-like "ee-o-lay" or " a-o-lee" songs back in the woods where the pair would nest in shrubbery.
A lovely female Baltimore oriole often fluttered in and out of a black walnut tree along the edge of the woodlot bordering a meadow. Some of the trees' limbs hung over the road I was on. No doubt, the oriole was feeding young in a deeply-pouched cradle she built on the tips of a few twigs at the end of a branch hanging over the road.
On one trip, I spotted a plain-brown, female indigo bunting feeding energetically on seeds of tall reed canary-grass on the sunny edge of the woods. She and her blue-feathered mate have a nest somewhere in the thickets on the margin of the woods.
A few male black-winged damselflies fluttered beautifully and daintily above the stream in the woods as they competed for mating territory along that waterway. They do have black wings, and iridescent-green abdomens that make them striking in the spotty sunlight of woodlands.
Female damselflies of this kind are sooty-gray all over. They blend into their environment better than their mates, which is good for the species because they are the ones laying eggs. Not all males of many species are needed for breeding.
Damselflies hatch under stones in streams and live there almost a year as larvae preying on tiny invertebrates. But they go through four-stage metamorphosis and emerge from waterways as winged adults ready to catch and eat flying insects, and mate to produce another generation of themselves.
I experienced a few other cold-blooded creatures in this woodlot in the few hours I was there. One day I saw a young northern water snake sneaking through the shallows of the stream after black-nosed dace and blunt-nosed minnows. Another day, I saw a garter snake undulating across the road I was on. And one late-morning, I heard several male green frogs gulping and belching in pools back in the woods. Some of those frogs would be fine, nightly food for local raccoons.
Again, as always, most any habitat, including human-made ones, has interesting plants and wildlife. All we have to do is to get and look for them.
No comments:
Post a Comment