Each summer, we have much wonderful and inspiring nature entertainment in our suburban back yard in New Holland, Pennsylvania, free and daily, in the forms of mourning doves, house sparrows, goldfish, koi, little brown bats, fireflies and annual cicadas. These are common species to be sure, but I never tire of experiencing them. I enjoy the everyday activities of these summer neighbors, which are relaxing and inspiring to me in the comfort of my own home.
The doves and sparrows nest on and around our house because they have grown accustomed to human activities and constructions. And neighbors feeding birds help keep those bird species, and others, in our neighborhood through the year.
Currently a pair of doves has a nest on each of two of our window air conditioners that they use at the same time. When one pair of young doves is half grown in their grassy nursery, their mother lays two eggs in her other cradle. And when the first young fledge, the second brood hatches. And when the second brood is half grown, their mother lays another clutch of two eggs in the first nest, and so it goes here from March into September. A pair of doves could raise six broods of two young for a total of twelve during the warmer months of a year. But wind blows some nests and eggs to the ground, destroying them. And crows, blue jays, house cats, opossums, raccoons and larger hawks and owls take their toll of eggs and young doves. And Cooper's hawks catch some of the adult doves anytime of year.
House sparrows are originally from Europe, invasive and drive certain native bird species from nesting territories. But the constant, lively activities of little groups of house sparrows are entertaining in cities, suburbs and farm yards. Here at home a pair of these weaver finches has a bulky, grass nursery in a decorative wreath in the front of our house and another pair has a cradle on a third window air conditioner. A third pair of sparrows has a grassy nest in a dilapidated, metal box on a roadside, electric pole right in front of our suburban home. With all these pairs of house sparrows double or triple nesting in a summer, we have close to a hundred lively house sparrows in our neighborhood in winter, all of which come to feeders.
I enjoy sitting by our one hundred gallon, outdoor fish pond in our back lawn to experience the beauty and constant activities of six goldfish and three koi in the clear water. No two of these fish are alike and they are the more interesting because of their variety of colors and color patterns. Their colors are brilliant and the fish continually swim under and out from under several small lily pads on the water's surface.
Soon after each spring, summer and autumn sunset, a few little brown bats are entertaining when performing silhouetted aerial ballets in the darkening sky as they chase and feed on flying insects. On powerful wings, they swiftly circle, swoop and dive across the sky to catch their prey in their toothed mouths. I can see the ears on those bats that sweep close to where I am on our lawn. And I think about the brain of each bat analyzing the echos of their continuous flow of verbal squeaks striking objects large and small in front of them. By their use of a kind of radar, they can form a mental image of the landscape and the flying insects in front of them, which allows them to avoid collisions and catch flying prey.
Every sunset from mid-June to late in July, a near-fantasy of millions of male fireflies present overwhelming shows of twinkling lights over fields, meadows and suburban lawns, including ours. Each evening, they climb vegetation and launch into the air like tiny helicopters, flashing their cold, abdominal lights as they go. The purpose of those innumerable flashing lights during summer nights is to bring the firefly genders together for reproduction. Then all adult fireflies disappear by their death. But the species is carried on by their carnivorous larvae in the soil.
And in the evening during much of August, dozens of male annual cicadas emit buzzy, pulsating trills from trees in our neighborhood, and thousands of other ones in the eastern United States. Male cicadas vibrate flaps under their abdomens to make that loud sound that overwhelms suburban neighborhoods. The purpose of that buzzing is to bring the genders together for mating. By the end of August, the cicadas' trilling is silent because of the insects' deaths. But, again, the species continues in the form of larvae sipping sugary sap from tree rootlets.
These are the more abundant, entertaining and inspiring bits of nature in our back yard that we experience on a daily, intimate basis. Readers can find inspiring nature in abundance in their neighborhoods by getting out and observing on an almost daily basis. The rewards of those experiences will be great.
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