Late this morning, January 6, 2017, I went for a drive through a little of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania farmland to see what creatures were stirring after an overnight, two-inch snowfall. I cruised by harvested corn and soybean fields, some of them planted to winter rye to hold down the soil and enrich it, mowed off alfalfa fields, Mill Creek and a few pasture brooks. All the cultivated vegetation in those fields and meadows was close to the ground, offering little cover for wildlife, making this habitat seem bleak at best. Few lone trees and fewer hedgerows break up the continuity of the cropland I visited today. All that hardly seems a good place for wildlife, especially in winter, but I saw several species of birds and mammals by looking at the many places they could be in winter.
A field full of manure strips, that had been freshly spread on top of the snow earlier that morning, caught my attention because I could see a flock of hundreds of horned larks sweeping and bounding low over the field in flight, then, abruptly, settling on it. Glassing the manure strips with binoculars, I saw the many sparrow-sized horned larks with their black and yellow face patterns and feather tufts that resemble two tiny "horns". But their body feathering is brown, which camouflages them in the open fields until those birds fly. But with snow on the ground I can see them better, both on the ground and in flight. Today,I saw several other, smaller groups of larks in fields and along roadsides. They ingest tiny pebbles from the roads to help grind seeds and grain in their stomachs.
With binoculars, I also saw scores of American pipits in the horned lark flocks among those manure strips. Pipits are also sparrow-sized, and brown all over, with darker streaking for camouflage in open habitats. Some pipits are also seen wintering along the shallow shores of pasture brooks in this area.
The horned larks and pipits briskly walked about among the manure in the field to consume seeds and tiny bits of chewed, but undigested, bits of corn in livestock manure. But these restless, small birds take flight a lot. Both species sweep low around the fields a couple of times in swift, bounding flight, then suddenly drop to the ground again where they abruptly disappear.
Snow buntings and Lapland longspurs, down from the Arctic tundra for the winter, often mix in with the lark and pipit flocks, but after searching for them carefully, I didn't see any buntings or longspurs today. I have at times in the past, however. And a couple of times I've seen pure flocks of scores of snow bunting here in Lancaster County cropland in the past.
Horned larks are the species most at home on these open fields in winter. Probably some of these larks nested here and were joined by others of their kind that swept down to this area for the winter from farther north. A few kestrels, and sometimes a merlin or two, are in this same farmland where both species prey on the larks and their small-bird associates through winter.
I came upon another series of manure strips in another field that had horned larks, rock pigeons, mourning doves, starlings and turkey vultures on it. All these bird species, except the vultures, were there to eat undigested grain in the manure. A few dead chickens, or other farm animals, must have been in that manure to have drawn the vultures to it.
Pigeons live and nest in local barns and under bridges, as they traditionally have on rock cliffs above the Mediterranean Sea in Europe. Their species was brought to America by colonists who wanted their meat and eggs. But many went wild and have had wild descendants here ever since.
Mourning doves are native to North America and are pigeon relatives. Doves nest in trees in the warmer months and form flocks of themselves through winter.
Checking meadow brooks and Mill Creek, I saw several critters associated with water in farmland. I found a few gangs of mallard ducks, one of which had three American wigeons in it. And I saw a muskrat swimming from one side of a stream to the other and disappear into a muskrat den at the water level in a stream bank. A great blue heron was wading Mill Creek to catch minnows, while a male belted kingfisher perched on a tree limb over that creek to watch for minnows. I saw a few song sparrows along the edges of brooks where they search for invertebrates in the inch-deep, lapping water, mud and shoreline grasses. I noticed two killdeer plovers along the shore of one running stream where they were picking up invertebrates from the mud. Sometimes, I see a few Wilson's snipe, which are wintering, inland sandpipers, along Lancaster County's pasture brooks, but not today. Snipe poke their long beaks into the mud of shorelines to pull out invertebrates. Each one of these brook edge birds feeds on the same foods, but in different ways, reducing competition for food among them.
At one long, lean patch of trees along Mill Creek, I noticed two pairs of red-tailed hawks flying about among those trees, with about a hundred yards between each pair. I believe they were mated pairs preparing to nest among those trees because red-tails begin their courtships in January, as do bald eagles. Those mated hawks might be interesting to watch, from a discreet distance.
Finally I stopped at a lean hedgerow of trees and shrubbery, between fields, just off the country road I was driving on. A few American robins were eating fruit from a crab apple tree, while a group of house finches rested in that same tree.
House finches nest in suburban and urban habitats, but leave those human-made habitats in fall. I think they might get chased out of those habitats by the more abundant, more aggressive house sparrows. The finches winter in hedgerows where they eat weed and grass seeds, fruit and berries.
I also caught glimpses of a couple of blue jays, a pair of northern cardinals, a gray squirrel in a tree and a cottontail rabbit hopping about among the tall weeds in that hedgerow. There could also have been a skunk or red fox there as well, or a screech owl resting for the day in a tree cavity. These last few species indicate further the number of species of wildlife that adapted to agricultural habitats. Readers can also drive or walk through habitats around their homes and watch for wildlife as they go. I will be interesting, even surprising, the number of kinds of adaptable critters found on such outings.
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