Late-October Farmland

     One afternoon toward the end of this October, I stopped at an open woodlot/pasture in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania farmland because I saw the white flashing of wings on a pair of adult red-headed woodpeckers as they flew from tree to tree on the edge of that small woods.  Red-heads, with red feathering covering their entire heads and necks, and black and white body plumage, are striking to see in their habitats of open woodlots and meadows with lots of large trees, a couple of them dead.  Red-heads chip nurseries out of the dead trees to raise young in summer.
     While watching those beautiful woodpeckers, and a little group of eastern bluebirds eating poison ivy berries on the edge of the meadow, I noticed there were several each of red maple, pin oak, shag-bark hickory and black walnut trees in that woodlot/pasture that straddled a stream of clear water.  The beautiful maples and oaks both had red leaves, while the foliage of the hickories was bronze-yellow.  The hickories also have strips of shaggy bark, each one of which peels up at both ends but is still attached by its middle to the tree, giving hickory bark a shaggy appearance.  Though bare of leaves, the black walnuts still had some green-husked nuts hanging on their twigs.  And there were many hickory nuts, some of them crushed by passing vehicles, lying on the rural road I was on where it passed under tall hickory trees.  Only the nut-storing gray squirrels have jaws strong enough and teeth sharp enough to chew through the husks and shells of walnuts and hickory nuts to get the meat inside each nut.  And all this was lovely symbols of late October in Lancaster County.
     I spent about two hours driving from place to place in a northern part of the county, near a line of low, wooded hills.  The landscape in this farmland is hilly and rocky, and the soil is red, causing less than ideal cropland.  But that same rough geology creates wildlife habitats because much of the land is let go to overgrown, weedy fields, hedgerows, roadside shoulders, woodlots and meadows.
     Weedy fields have several kinds of tall weeds and grasses that are loaded with seeds in autumn through winter, including pigweed, lamb's quarters, pokeweed, velvetleaf, milkweeds and foxtail grass. The leaves and stems of pigweed, lamb's quarters and poke turn red in fall and foxtail grass foliage is yellow in October.  Field mice and a small variety of sparrows inhabit those fields in autumn and winter and eat the seeds of the weeds and grasses. 
     In fall, hedgerows between fields, and roadsides, are red with the leaves of poke, staghorn sumac trees, white oak trees, Virginia creeper vines and the berries of multiflora rose and Tartarian honeysuckle bushes.  Some white oaks are massive, and loaded with acorns that gray squirrels, eastern chipmunks, American crows and blue jays consume.  And hedges are yellow with shag-bark hickory foliage, and orange and yellow with poison ivy leaves and bittersweet berries.  Poke, sumac, creeper, rose, honeysuckle, poison ivy and bittersweet berries are eaten by mice, squirrels and several kinds of birds, including American robins, eastern bluebirds and cedar waxwings.   
     That afternoon, I stopped at a hedgerow that was "loaded" with birds of a few species, including several robins, a half-dozen bluebirds, a few each of blue jays and yellow-rumped warblers, and one each of red-bellied woodpecker and northern flicker.  Most of those pretty birds were busily ingesting red multifora rose and Tartarian honeysuckle berries, or flitting from bush to bush.
     Woodlots are strikingly beautiful, including in autumn, with large trees of various kinds.  Some of the trees are the species mentioned above, plus hackberry and red juniper trees, and sycamore, crack willow, white ash and silver maple trees along streams.  Junipers grow berry-sized, light-blue, fleshy cones that are decorative in the green foliage of those evergreens.  Several kinds of birds eat the cones and pass the seeds far and wide, thus spreading the species across the countryside.  Some of the trees in woodlots and hedgerows are majestically large, helping make this patch of second-rate farmland prettier than intensely cultivated fields with better soil in flatter terrain; but with few, if any, woodlots and hedgerows.         
      The beauties of this farmland in rough terrain were a joy to see.  The colored leaves and berries, variety of plants and birds were enjoyable and inspiring close to home.  Most people throughout the world don't have to travel far to see the beauties of nature.