For about 45 minutes one sunny afternoon early in December of this year, I drove slowly along a rural road by a small creek about a mile from my home in New Holland, Pennsylvania. I was out to see what wildlife was active in the short amount of time I had for that venture. I soon saw a small bird fluttering in a thin thicket of red-twigged dogwood bushes, young ash-leafed maple trees loaded with winged seeds, and tall grass along that waterway. I stopped and waited for the bird to emerge from the shrubbery so I could identify it with 16 power binoculars.
The bird was a lovely male house finch, along with a few others of its kind in that thicket. And as I briefly watched the finches, a male cardinal and a song sparrow flashed into view among the dogwoods. All those small birds, and other attractive species, had shelter from cold wind and predators among the bushes, saplings and tall grass, and found seeds to eat among the grasses and weeds in that streamside thicket.
Driving on at a crawl, I stopped at another patch of tall grass and weeds standing right down to the slow-running water, and under a few each of medium-sized ash-leafed maple, silver maple and black walnut trees on those same banks. A dozen handsome mallard ducks of both genders loafed on the sluggish water while a beautifully camouflaged Wilson's snipe rapidly probed its long bill up and down into the mud of inch-deep water along the shore to snare aquatic invertebrates to ingest. Snipe are sandpipers that breed and winter inland, mostly along flowing streams and in grassy bogs.
While watching the mallards and snipe, I saw a male downy woodpecker hitch itself up the trunk of an ash-leafed maple tree and chip audibly at patches of dead, loose bark to find invertebrates, or their eggs, under that protective bark. And I noted a lone Carolina chickadee among the twigs and buds of that same tree, where it looked for insect eggs to consume. Because these woodland birds search for food on different parts of each tree, they reduce competition for food between them and both species can live in the same wooded environments.
While watching the charming woodpecker and chickadee working for a meal in the tree, I saw another flash of movement among the grasses along the water line of the opposite shore. Looking with my field glasses, I saw the small bird was a winter wren along the little creek for the winter. Its kind is more likely to winter along small waterways in woodlands, rather than along a tree-lined stream in farmland.
The wren crept down to the waterline and onto a tiny mudflat where it poked around for small invertebrates to eat. Suddenly, a song sparrow came into my view on that same flat. It, too, was searching for invertebrates to ingest. Both the wren and sparrow actively moved about from narrow flat to small gravel bar at the water's edge in their quest for food. Song sparrows are more likely to live in wider patches of tall grasses and shrubbery in cropland and suburban areas. But, being adaptable, this one lives in a narrow strip of tall grasses, weeds and middle-aged trees. And because both the wren and sparrow are adaptable, they are wintering side by side in a habitat that meets the needs of both birds. Therefore, interestingly, the winter wren and song sparrow hunted for invertebrates on the same flats and bars along the lapping waters of the little creek.
Winter wrens and song sparrows have a few characteristics in common. They are basically brown, which camouflages them well among dead, fallen leaves on forest floors in the case of the wrens, and dead, beige grasses in overgrown fields in the case of the sparrows. And both these little birds like small waterways where they find much invertebrate food. They creep around on the ground like feathered mice when searching for food.
But, while song sparrows are permanent residents here, winter wrens are here only in winter and nest farther north and in the mountains of the United States. And the sparrows also ingest seeds, something the wrens do not do.
The creek made all this beauty possible. Farmers can't plow right up to the waterways' shores, so many of those shorelines become overgrown with a variety of tall vegetation which shelters wildlife. Shrubby thickets harbor cardinals, finches and other wildlife species, woodpeckers, chickadees and other creatures get food and shelter from trees along the waterways' edges and winter wrens and song sparrows winter along stream banks where they find food on mud flats and gravel bars and shelter among tree roots and tall grasses. Waterways provide oases of shelter for wildlife in cropland.
It was thrilling to see the winter wren because they are small, camouflaged, secretive and, therefore, seldom seen, even by birders. And it was interesting to see two unrelated kinds of small birds sharing a common narrow habitat because they are both adaptable. Nature is always full of beauties and surprises throughout the world. Nothing is as enjoyable and inspiring to me and many other people as nature.
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