Birds Nesting in New Holland Suburbs

     Several kinds of birds have adapted to nesting in suburban areas with their grassy lawns, trees and shrubbery of various sizes that people plant for the beauties of that vegetation, including here in New Holland, Pennsylvania.  These birds benefit from nesting in suburbs because it increases their breeding capacity, and numbers.  Some of these breeding species use more than one niche in suburban lawns; one for their nurseries and another for feeding.  And we benefit because many of these species have lovely songs that we enjoy hearing and all suburban birds are interesting to experience, right at home!
     The attractive American robins and American goldfinches build sturdy, easily-identifiable cradles in young trees on lawns, as they have traditionally done along the edges of woodlands.  Robins catch invertebrates on the ground in lawns and fields to feed to their young and themselves.  Goldfinches feed on weed and grass seeds, particularly thistle seeds, and feed a porridge of half-digested seeds to their youngsters in their nurseries.  
     Permanent resident northern cardinals, song sparrows and northern mockingbirds, and summering gray catbirds, all of which have beautiful songs, raise offspring in open nurseries in lawn shrubbery, as their species also do in hedgerows and woodland edges.  All these species consume invertebrates from short-grass lawns, fields and bushes to feed their babies and themselves. 
     People plant evergreen trees for the green beauties of their needles the year around.  A variety of attractive bird species regularly nest in varying -sized coniferous trees, including mourning doves, house finches, chipping sparrows, blue jays, American crows, great horned owls, Cooper's hawks and loose colonies of purple grackles.  The finches and sparrows mostly hatch young in the dense foliage of young northern white cedar or arborvitae trees on lawns.  Jays, crows, owls and hawks generally raise youngsters high in the taller conifers. The doves go to fields to ingest seeds and feed their young a mix of pre-digested seeds and throat mucus called "pigeons' milk".  Jays and crows eat a variety of available foods, including invertebrates, while owls and hawks feed on various small vertebrates they snare in fields and suburban areas.
     Several kinds of birds regularly, but sparingly,  nest in tree cavities and nest boxes put out for birds to rear offspring in.  These are woodland birds originally, but they adapted to living in suburbs with lots of trees as well.  Downy woodpeckers chip out hollows to nest in.  But Carolina chickadees, tufted titmice and house wrens nest in abandoned woodpecker holes, and bird houses erected for them to rear young in.  These small, woodland species feed on invertebrates during the warmer months.
     Screech owls nest in tree cavities in the suburbs.  And they commute to fields to catch mice and larger insects to feed to their youngsters.
     A few kinds of birds hatch offspring in crevices and shelving in and on buildings.  House sparrows and starlings, which are alien birds from Eurasia and Africa, nest almost nowhere else than on buildings of various types.  Native chimney swifts rear young down the inside of chimneys as they had down the insides of hollow trees.  And Carolina wrens are notorious for nesting in all kinds of sheltering, built structures, including inside garages and other outbuildings, in outdoor grills and under decks and porches, as they do in stone walls, rock piles, brush piles and stacks of firewood.  
     And suburban areas that have ponds will host nesting mallard ducks, Canada geese, killdeer and, maybe, a few tree swallows that hatch youngsters in bird boxes, mail boxes and so on.  Ducklings mostly eat invertebrates in the ponds, goslings graze on grass, killdeer babies eat invertebrates on the ground and adult tree swallows catch flying insects to feed their young.
     These are some of the bird species that more regularly raise offspring in suburban areas.  Their adapting to less than ideal conditions results in their maintaining higher numbers of themselves.  And they make our lives more interesting and enjoyable right at home!