Winter Nature Close to Home

     One can enjoy and be inspired by the beauty and intrigue of nature close to home as much as by traveling all over the world.  The same rules apply to every kind of life in every niche throughout Earth.  I drove into scenic farmland less than a mile from my home in New Holland, Pennsylvania on January 11, 2017, a cloudy, but pleasantly warm day, simply to enjoy nature where I found it.  I had been in that particular cropland dozens of times, but I am a firm believer that the best places to observe nature intimately and enjoy it are the most ordinary, the most familiar and, perhaps, the closest to home.  And I believe that one can learn the most lessons from the most adaptable, therefore, the most numerous and visible of species.  But, sometimes, one must wait and watch even for the most common of wild creatures.
     The first stop I made was just outside New Holland, by a meadow of tall grasses and so-called weeds with a small stream flowing through that pasture.  I stopped to see what I estimated to be 70 beautiful mallard ducks.  Some were swimming in a slow stretch of the waterway, while others were feeding, half-concealed, on seeds and shoots of the beige-colored plants in that pasture.  I looked for other kinds of ducks among the mallards, as there sometimes are, but didn't see any in that flock.
     As I briefly scanned the mallards, I noticed an adult red-tailed hawk perched low in a leaning, dead tree in the meadow.  But a minute later that raptor flapped and soared over the pasture and ducks and landed in a half-grown tree beside another red-tail in an overgrown thicket in a pasture across the road from the first one.  I suspect these red-tails are a mated pair because mid-January is the beginning of red-tail nesting season.  Meanwhile, many panic-stricken mallards flew up from the tall grasses and landed on the stream for their safety.  There they swam about with their necks stretched upward in alarm. 
     While the mallards and red-tails were interacting with each other in the foreground of my view, I noticed about 16 rock pigeons wheeling several times in the sky over farm buildings in the background.  Maybe they were just getting exercise, but I thought those pigeons would never land, but finally they did on a silo and electric wires across the farmyard.  Pigeons are permanent residents wherever they are and they feed on waste grain in the fields and roost and nest in farm buildings, under bridges over roads and on the rock ledges of quarries.  They originally nested on rock cliffs of the Mediterranean Sea in Europe.
     While I was watching the activities of the handsome mallards, red-tails and pigeons, I noticed a picturesque great blue heron wading in the brook in the back of the pasture in its search for minnows to eat.  And I saw a muskrat swim quickly from one bank to the other and disappear into a muskrat burrow, in a swirl of stirred-up mud, at the waterway's normal level.
     Moving on, I parked along another country road with a soybean field harvested to the ground on one side and an alfalfa field on the other, both of which were only a few hundred yards from the Mallard Meadow, which I could still see.  A few northern horned larks, with their striking yellow and black face patterns walked over the dead soybean plants and bare ground to look for weed and grass seeds to eat.  Because most of their feathering is so well camouflaged, I would not have seen them if they weren't moving about in search of food.
     While sitting by that soybean field, I noticed that the mallards took flight and were circling the pasture at tree top level several times.  I didn't know if the ducks just wanted exercise or if they were stirred into flight by the red-tails or some other creature.
     And while the mallards were flying back and forth over the meadow, I noticed a group of nine Canada geese flying and honking across the sky and landing in that same pasture to nibble short grass.  I've seen Canadas in that area off and on for years.  It seems to be one of their favorite feeding areas.    
     I drove back to the overgrown meadow, which is dominated by half-grown river birch trees and red-twig dogwood shrubs, both of which do well in constantly moist ground, which that pasture has.  The birches have rustic and attractive bark that peels off trunks and limbs in thin, little strips.  And the dogwoods do have beautifully red twigs.  There are, also, a few crab apple trees in that thicket and a wall to wall, tall carpet of grasses and "weeds".
     I saw a few species of small birds in that thicket during the 15 minutes I watched it.  Twelve or more house sparrows resting in a birch where they might have been eating its seeds or grass seeds.  There were a few American goldfinches perched on weeds and eating their seeds.  A song sparrow was hopping about and flicking its tail along the bank of the stream in that thicket, a niche where it consumes seeds and invertebrates.  And I saw a northern mockingbird in that thicket.  I saw the mocker fly in with white wing patches flashing.  But that bird seemed to disappear the instant it settled on a twig because its wing patches were covered.  I saw it again when it flew to another tree because of those flashing wings.  That white that disappears when the mockers land might confuse predators who see the flashing and then they don't.  The mocker's food, incidentally, probably is the fruits of the crab apples.
     As I drove home, I was filled again with peace, joy and inspiration from having experienced nature up close and personally.  All that less than a mile from home.