Nature in Fall

     On November 2, 2016, I went looking for highlights of nature in farmland and wood lots around Honey Brook in Chester County, Pennsylvania.  I made two stops where meadows, woodlots and small waterways mingle in bottomlands.  The weather that day was delightful with clear skies, warm temperatures and little wind.  And autumn leaves were at their peak of beautiful colors in woodlots  and on distant wooded hills.
     Stop one was a mix of a small pasture overgrown with reed canary-grass and multiflora rose bushes that bordered a brook, all under an open canopy of several tall silver maple and black alder trees.  The rose bushes had many red berries that will feed deer mice and berry-eating birds, including northern mockingbirds, American robins and cedar waxwings, during the coming winter.  The alders had many decorative, tightly-closed catkins (male flowers) hanging from twigs that will open and undulate in the wind next March.  The alders also had small, woody cones with tiny seeds in them that will feed seed-eating sparrows and finches through winter.  
     I saw a few species of birds during the hour I visited that little meadow, including a pair of Carolina chickadees, a few house finches, a song sparrow, a pair of northern cardinals, a few white-throated sparrows, a pine warbler and a family of about six tufted titmice.  The chickadees, titmice, finches, cardinals and song sparrow are all permanent residents of that overgrown, tree-studded meadow and its surrounding cropland.  But the white-throats and pine warbler are migrants or winter residents only. 
     While I was there, the house finches were feasting on ragweed seeds on the dried plants.  The white-throats scratched among fallen leaves for invertebrates and seeds under those leaves.  The titmouse family was all over the alders in search of tiny invertebrates to eat.  The feeding activities of those birds made this little pasture the more interesting. 
     I made a second stop a few miles from the first one because I saw an adult red-headed woodpecker land on a wooden fence post near the road just as I drove by that post.  Quickly stopping along the side of the road, I noticed two adult red-heads on a dead tree in a small pasture studded with living pin oak and red maple trees.  The maples' leaves were breathtakingly red, especially against the blue sky.  The woodpeckers' feathers on their wings and bodies were black and white patterned, and their heads were completely, strikingly red!  Both woodpeckers were actively catching flying insects in mid-air, as their species often does.
     A pair of red-tailed hawks were perched in different trees in a nearby, colorful woodlot of red maples mostly.  Those hawks probably were quietly watching for gray squirrels gathering acorns and storing them for winter use in tree cavities and holes the squirrels dig into the ground.  Any squirrel caught off guard could be caught and eaten by the hawks.  If that happens, some of the acorns buried in the soil could sprout into new trees.
     Meanwhile, three lovely blue jays were taking turns gathering and flying away with pin oak acorns in their beaks to that same red maple wood lot.  There they will stash those nuts in tree hollows or in shallow holes in the soil of the woods.  The jays make those holes in the ground with their beaks and push a nut into each one of them.  But if a jay is killed or forgets where it buried acorns in the ground, those nuts could develop into young trees, if squirrels and mice don't find them first.  
     A flock of about 20 mourning doves and a gathering of around 30 purple grackles were feeding on the ground among each other where the meadow and woodlot met.  The doves were eating weed seeds while the grackles were consuming invertebrates and seeds.  The grackles constantly flipped fallen leaves over to uncover those food items. 
     I thought this was an intriguing, enjoyable nature trip in the beauties of colored leaves, nice weather and interesting birds.  It's days like this that are inspiring and uplifting.  Anyone can enjoy nature most anytime, anywhere.  One just has to get out to experience it and let it work its wonders.