A Mid-Winter Nature Drive

     I went on a local, mid-winter nature drive for an hour on the sunny afternoon of December 20, 2016.  I say mid-winter because to me December 21, the shortest day of the year, is the middle of winter and the end of the biological year, a Biological New Year's Eve.  December 22, then is Biological New Year's Day.  From that day on, periods of daylight each successive day get longer as the northern hemisphere begins to tilt toward the sun, heralding spring's coming north.
     I drove out of New Holland, Pennsylvania on country roads for two miles, passing suburbs, farmland, a couple of streams and wood lots on the way.  Those four habitats are the major ones in Lancaster County.
     The first creatures I saw as I drove out of town were about 60 mallard ducks and close to  that number of Canada geese in an overgrown meadow with a stream flowing through it.  I must say that no matter how commonplace mallards and Canadas are, they are the most handsome and stately of waterfowl in this county. 
     Some of the ducks were swimming in a slow part of the waterway, while others of their gathering were feeding on weed and grass seeds from three-foot-tall, beige plants close to the water.  The drakes had beautifully iridescent-green heads that shown in the in the sunlight while the female mallards were lovely in a camouflaged way in the dead and light-brown grass.
     The geese were elegant with gray plumage on their bodies, and with their black-feathered rears, necks and heads, with a white chin "strap" on each side of the head.  Those Canadas were grazing on short grass in a back part of that pasture.     
     Driving on, I saw a fairly large, female American holly tree loaded with striking red berries on a lawn.  Another holly, a male, had no berries on it.  But the male's pollen blew on the wind in May and fertilized the female's blooms, hence the decorative scarlet berries.
     Moving on, I saw a young thicket of pretty shrubbery and trees in an abandoned meadow along the road I was on.  I saw a few cranberry viburnum bushes with lots of red berries, a couple of red-twigged dogwoods complete with red twigs, and a few young white oak and pin oak trees that still had several dead leaves clinging to them.  At some time in winter, American robins and other kinds of birds will eat those viburnum berries.
     Here and there, along the way, I saw stately, planted Norway spruce trees and white pine trees that lend green to the gray and beige winter landscape.  Many of the spruces also had decorative, beige cones on their upper limbs that have seeds that gray squirrels, mice, and American goldfinches, house finches, two kinds of chickadees and other kinds of small birds will eat during winter.  
     As I continued to drive through farmland, I saw a Cooper's hawk zip up into a tall, deciduous tree in a meadow where it perched to watch for birds to prey on.  A pair of red-tailed hawks perched on a tall tree in a nearby pasture.  I suspect those red-tails are a mated pair that may have a nest, or will build one, nearby.  And in that second meadow I saw a couple of eastern bluebirds on roadside electric wires and a northern mockingbird in a big clump of multiflora rose.  Both those species eat invertebrates when they can, but will turn to berries when the weather is cold and invertebrates are not available to them.
     I parked by a small, weedy thicket on the edge of a woodland before returning home.  The thicket was filled with tall, dead goldenrod stalks and dogbane plants.  A male northern cardinal and a song sparrow were among the goldenrod, eating their seeds.  A staghorn sumac tree with several pyramid-shaped clusters of fuzzy, red berries was in the little thicket.  And several vines of bitterweet, each one loaded with orange berries, were strung beautifully in the trees on the edge of the clearing.  White fluff, each one with a brown seed, floated out of the open pods of the dogbanes and away on the wind.  Some of those seeds will find good soil in sunny places to sprout and grow.  
     On the two-mile trip home I saw another Cooper's hawk land on a lawn and a group of small birds perched on the top of a half-grown, deciduous tree in a pasture.  Using binoculars, I looked at the congregations of birds in the tree and saw they were house finches, with several pink-breasted males.  Over the years, I've noticed that house finches nest in suburbs, but are scarce there in winter.  I think they may be driven out of town by gangs of house sparrows, which can be aggressive.  But the house finches seem to winter in weedy hedgerows and woodland edges outside of towns during winter.  That way, perhaps, they can live and feed without being harassed by house sparrows.  It's interesting how nature works out many potential problems.  
     Though it only lasted around an hour, I enjoyed that nature trip with its magnificent trees, lovely berries and interesting birds.  Readers can do the same.  Just get out and look around.  Most any nature excursion, no matter how long or short, can be enjoyable and inspiring.  They can give many people a new lease on life.