Cropland is a habitat that is tough for wildlife to live in because of the annual disturbances of plowing, discing, herbicides, insecticides and harvesting crops to the ground, leaving little cover. Farmland appears barren of wildlife through all seasons, until one watches that human-made habitat more closely. Then one sees an abundance of adaptable critters in fields and meadows in all seasons, including summer. I have known that cropland just outside of New Holland in Lancaster County Pennsylvania, for example, has an abundance of wild creatures of several kinds. To prove that point, this mid-may I drove through farmland around New Holland for two hours a day in three successive days, stopping here and there to get a better experience of the surrounding wildlife.
I saw obvious flocks of American robins, purple grackles starlings, rock pigeons, mourning doves and house sparrows almost everywhere in the fields and meadows, where they were eating invertebrates and seeds. But I was looking for the not so obvious critters that I knew from past experience were also in farmland.
I saw lots of barn swallows, a few small groups of purple martins and a couple pairs of tree swallows skimming low over large fields and pastures after flying insects they catch on the wing. Barn swallows raise young in mud pellet and grass nests attached to the sides of support beams in barns and under bridges. I saw several barn swallows gathering beak-fulls of mud from one pasture trickle to build their cradles. Martins raise young in apartment bird houses erected especially for them and tree swallows fight eastern bluebird pairs to rear offspring in bird boxes in farmland.
Striking male red-winged blackbirds, with their red shoulder patches, perched on cattails and tall grasses swaying in the wind in wetter spots in sunny meadows, and repeatedly sang their "kon-ga-ree" songs. Red-wings nest in colonies because their wetland habitats are so limited in size.
Some fields and meadows had puddles of standing water in them from recent heavy rain. I checked them for nesting killdeer plovers and migrating sandpipers. I found a couple killdeer and a half dozen least sandpipers around one shallow puddle in a short-grass pasture. The plovers will probably raise chicks there, but the sandpipers will migrate north to the Arctic tundra to hatch young. I have seen other kinds of migrating shorebirds in these fields through the years.
Many acres of fields were bare of vegetation, except tiny field corn plants just starting to emerge from the soil. There I saw a few pairs each of horned larks and killdeer foraging for invertebrates in those nearly barren fields. And I know from past experience that these two species of birds will rear young in those, for now, barren corn fields.
A few bird species of special beauty and interest to me in local farmland are eastern kingbirds, Baltimore orioles and red-headed woodpeckers that summer among tall, scattered trees in meadows. These birds are alll fairly common here, but are secretive and not often seen until time is taken to watch for them. Kingbirds perch on fences and tree twigs and fly out to catch flying insects on the wing. They build cradles of twigs and grass in the forks of pasture trees. The lovely orioles forage for invertebrates among the trees and make pouch nurseries on the tips of tree limbs. And the striking woodpeckers raise young in cavities they drill into dead wood and gather invertebrates from tree branches, the grass below and dead trees.
Species of small birds nesting in thickets of young trees, shrubbery and tall grasses and weeds along country roadsides, hedgerows between fields and streambank fencing in cropland, and in certain wet spots in meadows and corners of fields, are also common here. But those birds often are difficult to spot because they hide most of the time in the sheltering thickets. One thicket of about an acre in size that I visited in a damp pasture hosted at least a few each of red-winged blackbirds, American goldfinches, song sparrows, northern cardinals and kingbirds, and at least one each of eastern bluebird, northern mockingbird, chipping sparrow and willow flycatcher. All these species consume invertebrates in summer, except the goldfinches that ingest seeds.
And one ten-acre meadow I visited that has several young trees and a few large bushes had a few red-wings in it, plus a pair of gray catbirds, cardinals, house finches and kingbirds, and a Carolina chickadee, a mockingbird and a singing male indigo bunting.
These adaptable kinds of birds keep their populations higher by nesting in human-made habitats that resemble their original ones. And we humans benefit from experiencing the beauties and intrigues of those bird species in the midst of our farming activities close to home.
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