Intrigues of Fly-catching Animals

     One beautiful, sunny evening this mid-July, I was driving through lovely Lancaster County, Pennsylvania farmland to take in its beauties.  By chance, I saw several each of barn swallows and green darner dragonflies skimming low among their fellows and each other in pursuit of some kind of flying insects over a pretty, tree and shrub-studded meadow, cleaved by a clear, musical brook.  Speeding and weaving without collision with each other, these airborne creatures produced such a show of aerial acrobatics that I stopped to watch them.  Both species must have split-second timing and quick reflexes to maneuver that way.  They are built for what they do to make a living
     The swallows raised young in nearby barns while the darners lived as larvae on pond bottoms, changed to adults with wings and emerged from the ponds to search for flying insects food and mates. They happened to come together in fairly large numbers because of the abundance of food in one spot; thousands of insects shimmering before the setting sun.
     While watching the intriguing swallows and dragonflies catching and eating flying insects, I saw a few other kinds of fly-catching birds, including a family each of eastern kingbirds, willow flycatchers and eastern phoebes, all of which are in the flycatcher family of birds, and a family of eastern bluebirds in the thrush family of birds.  These birds don't snare airborne victims one after the other in rapid succession as swallows and dragonflies do on the wing.  Rather the flycatchers and bluebirds perch on tree and shrub twigs, fences and roadside wires to watch for prey, then flit out and snap up one insect at a time and flutter back to a perch to eat their victims, one at a time.  But no less intriguing than the swallows and dragonflies, these birds create another type of summer entertainment, for those who know to watch for it.
     Each flycatcher species and the bluebirds had reason to be in that beautiful, tree and shrub-dotted pasture to raise young.  Kingbirds hatch offspring in grass cradles on twigs in lone trees in open country, including in cropland.  Willow flycatchers rear young in grassy cups in dense, protective shrubbery such as, and especially in, multifora  rose bushes in meadows.  Phoebes originally nested on rock ledges, under overhanging boulders, near waterways in woodlands.  But phoebes have also adapted to raising young on support beams under small bridges over streams in tree-dotted pastures.  There is a little bridge over a small waterway in the meadow I visited that lovely, summer evening.  Bluebirds prefer open habitat with scattered trees and bushes.  This species hatches babies in unused tree cavities, and nesting boxes erected for them in pastures and fields.
     All these critters, however, except some of the bluebirds, will migrate south to escape the northern winter.  They are not avoiding the cold, but rather are moving to places where they will have unending flying insects to eat during the northern winter.  Some bluebirds, however, stay north, where they eat berries, and huddle together at night in tree cavities and bird boxes.  
     It was interesting and inspiring to watch those fly-catching birds and dragonflies hawking insects over a meadow that pretty, summer evening.  Readers can have similar experiences by getting out and keeping an eye open for possibilities in the natural world, almost anytime and almost anywhere.