Nature at Middle Creek

     I drove to Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area in southeastern Pennsylvania for a couple of hours one afternoon in the middle of August of this year to experience what was happening in nature.  I stayed on the main blacktop road that passes through Middle Creek and limited my survey to the large impoundment of a few hundred acres and three ponds of a few acres each across that road from the lake.  I mostly saw wetland plants and animals during that little trip, but also a potpouri of other living beings.
     Big carp jumping partly out of the water to snap up flying insects were one of the first creatures I noticed in the main lake at Middle Creek.  Those carp and their young are the base of several food chains in that large impoundment, including the two immature bald eagles I saw soaring high over the lake, possibly watching for larger fish to snare in their claws and consume.  And the half dozen double-crested cormorants and adult Caspian tern I noticed perched on dead tree stumps projecting from shallows in that impoundment the day I was there feed on smaller fish.  Cormorants dive from the water's surface to catch prey in their beaks while the tern dives into the water from the air. 
      I also saw a couple of green-backed herons, a few great blue herons and two great egrets wading here and there in shallows along the shores of the lake and a couple of ponds.  They, too, were watching for small fish to catch and eat.  The related herons and egrets have long legs for wading in water and lengthy necks and beaks to reach out and grab finny prey in those sharp bills.
     I saw several painted turtles of various sizes sunning themselves on rocks, and logs fallen into shoreline shallows in the lake and one of the ponds.  The cold-blooded turtles sun themselves to warm themselves enough to hunt food and mates.  Happily, those turtles were in propagation areas where people are not allowed to enter.
     Patches of cattails and a few common kinds of flowering plants inhabited the open, sunny wetlands surrounding the lake and ponds.  Some of the flowering vegetation included swamp milkweeds with pink blooms, blue vervains that have bluish-purple blossoms, tall Joe Pye-weeds that exhibit bouquets of dusty-pink flowers, ironweeds with hot-pink blooms and bushy-looking spotted jewelweeds that have numerous cornocopia-shaped, orange flowers. 
     A variety of beautiful, interesting insects, including bumble bees, monarch butterflies and tiger and spicebush swallowtail butterflies, visited the blossoms of those flowering plants to sip nectar.  The monarchs were also around those little wetlands because of the common and swamp milkweed plants there.  Female monarchs lay eggs on milkweed leaves, which are their caterpillars' only food.  The two kinds of adult, flying swallowtails emerged from nearby woods to visit the wetland flowers because tiger larvae eat tree leaves and spicebush caterpillars consume spicebush and sassafras foliage.  The nearby bottomland woods are filled with shrubby spicebushes.                    
     Cattails, rushes, crack willow trees, bull lilies that had yellow flowers earlier in summer and lotus lilies that will soon have blossoms dominated one of the little ponds.  Lotus lilies have large, round and flat leaves and flower heads that resemble the multi-holed heads of shower nozzles.  They are uncommon here in southeastern Pennsylvania and I was surprised to see them at Middle Creek.
     There were a few natural highlights in the drier parts of Middle Creek, near the wetlands along the road I was on.  Several barn swallows zipped back and forth over the landscape as they caught flying insects in mid-air.  I also saw an eastern kingbird perched on a wire as it watched for insects in the air.  And I glimpsed a pair of lovely eastern bluebirds and a pretty male indigo bunting on the edge of a thicket of shrubs and sapling trees.  
     The tiny, yellow blossoms of Canada goldenrod, the dusty-pink blooms of common milkweed and the pale-orange flowers of black-eyed Susans dominated the attractive flowers along that roadside.  And those pretty blooms were alive with bees and butterflies sipping nectar.
     I had the good fortune to see eight beautiful American goldfinches, most of them yellow and black males, bathing in a slow, shallow part of a small brook.  They didn't all bathe at once.  Two or three were splashing in the inch-deep water at once, while the other goldfinches waited there turn while perched on nearby tree twigs.  After all individuals had bathed, the whole flock bounced away in flight amid their cheery, musical notes.
     I also noted a flock of 16 lovely cedar waxwings, some of them the young of the year, perched in a choke cherry tree and ingesting some of its fruits.  Each bird seemed to consume its fill of small, pitted cherries, then fly a short distance to another tree to rest and digest.  But after a short time, each bird was back to eat again.  All that feeding and flying back and forth created a bit of a show.       
     But, perhaps, the single most exciting sighting of the day was two female wild turkeys together, with five half-grown poults between them.  That little flock of turkeys was along the edge of a tall corn field right along the road I was on.  The hens nervously watched for danger while the young were dashing about in pursuit of what looked like grasshoppers and other insects.
     The turkeys were thrilling to me because I haven't seen many hens with young over the years, even though wild turkeys in southeastern Pennsylvania are fairly common and widespread.  I see occasional flocks of adult turkeys on a somewhat regular basis in fall and winter, but not broods of young in summer until this year.
     My trip to Middle Creek that afternoon in the middle of August was nothing special.  But one can see the variety of wildlife that can be found in a small area during a limited period of time if one gets out and looks diligently for it.  And wildlife seen always offers great rewards.