A Few Food Chains

     For nearly two hours on the warm, sunny afternoon of November 2, 2017, I drove slowly through cropland just outside New Holland, Pennsylvania to see colored foliage and whatever wildlife was visible.  I stopped here and there to enjoy nature more closely.  Red maple, red oak, pin oak, white oak and staghorn sumac trees had red leaves and tulip trees, shagbark hickories and sassafras trees had yellow ones, making striking displays of autumn foliage along hedgerows, and in fields and pastures where lone trees exist.
     I didn't see a big variety of wildlife that afternoon, but what I did notice made me think again about food chains in the wild, including in farmland.  For example, I stopped for about 15 minutes at the edge of a two-acre patch of red juniper trees because I saw that some of those junipers had many cones on them.  Those cones are berry-like, light-blue in color and attractive in themselves, and in the pretty, interesting birds that consume them, including American robins, eastern bluebirds, cedar waxwings, yellow-rumped warblers and other kinds of birds wintering in this area.
      A flock of American robins were feasting on those tiny cones while I was watching the junipers.  Those wintering birds darted from tree to tree to eat cones and some robins dropped to the ground, presumably to ingest invertebrates on that warm afternoon.  Those birds digest the pulp of the cones, but pass the seeds in their droppings wherever they go, thus spreading the juniper species.
     The attractive, green-needled junipers, their pretty cones and the feeding robins presented a lovely, peaceful scene.  But if a Cooper's hawk showed up among those junipers, the scene would be  different in an instant.  The robins, and any other types of birds, would vanish immediately.  Coop's prey on starlings, robins, mourning doves, rock pigeons and other kinds of medium-sized birds.  And this type of hawk, with its short, powerful wings and long, steering tail, is built for speedy, maneuverable flight among trees to catch panicky, dodging birds.
     I drove on a quarter of a mile and stopped at a one-acre park of several large red oaks, white oaks and shagbark hickories across a rural road from a deciduous woodlot and a couple of lawns that had red maples, pin oaks and other kinds of trees in them.  Several gray squirrels and an eastern chipmunk were busily scurrying on the ground in the park to gather and store acorns and hickory nuts for use this coming winter.  Squirrels stash their edible prizes, one at a time, in tree cavities and little holes they dig in the soil; one nut per hole.  Chippies, however, fill their twin cheek pouches with acorns and other edibles and run down their underground burrows to a storage chamber where they empty their cheeks, then leave their dens to look for more food.  Squirrels and chipmunks gather nuts much of each day for several days in fall to ensure their survival in winter.
     The large, strong red-tailed hawks, and other predators, prey on the daytime-active squirrels and chipmunks.  Some of the acorns and other nuts those rodents buried in the ground, therefore, are not eaten by them.  Those nuts sprout into new, seedling oak and hickory trees, ensuring a supply of edible nuts in the future.  Death for some rodents is life for others in the future.
     While the gray squirrels and chippies rustled among colorful, fallen leaves on the ground to find nuts, a handful of striking, but silent, blue jays flew in and out of a beautiful pin oak tree across the road from the park.  Time after time, each of those jays plucked an acorn from its twig and flew off with the nut in its beak to store it in a tree hollow or the ground for winter use.  Each jay pokes a hole in the soil with its strong, black bill, pushes the nut into that depression and pulls soil back over it with its bill.  This they do much of each day for several days in fall.  But some of those little acorns sprout the next spring.
     Cooper's hawks are big and strong enough to catch and kill blue jays for food.  Those hawks watch the jays at work and look for opportunities to ambush one or more.  The jays do their best to escape by swerving in mid-air and diving into shrubbery, but Coop's are swift on the wing, can change direction "on a dime" and plunge into shrubbery after their intended prey, all in a flash.
     These are only a few local food chains in farmland.  There are innumerable other food chains throughout Earth.  And they make our lives more interesting when we notice some of them.