Church Campus Wildlife

     For two hours late in May, I sat in my car on a church campus parking lot by a cattail-rimmed retention basin of inches-deep water and watched and listened to about eight male red-winged blackbirds sing "kon-ga-ree" from swaying cattails and several male green frogs belching at the base of the cattails.  Both those wild choruses were songs of courtship and reproduction.  The red-wings were jet-black with red shoulder patches.  Meanwhile, brown and dark-streaked female red-wings were feeding their young in their grassy nurseries anchored to cattail stalks.
     There was a large snapping turtle moving slowly through the shallows of that retention basin and a green heron stalking among the bases of the cattails on the shores of the water.  The main foods of the snapper would be frogs and their tadpoles and any helpless red-wing babies that fell from their cradles.  The green heron would mostly eat frogs, tadpoles and larger insects around the water.   
     This cattail basin is at the end of a regularly mowed lawn, sparsely dotted with planted trees, on a large church campus in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  And while parked at the retention basin, I noticed a half dozen adult killdeer plovers walking about on the blacktop parking lot and the lawn bordering it.  Those plovers could have been hatching young on the islands of gravel, each of which protected a planted tree from vehicles.  But because killdeer and their young and eggs are camouflaged on stones and I didn't look for their stony cradles, I didn't see any fuzzy young, or eggs, among the stones.         
     While I sat in my car on that parking lot, I noticed several each of barn swallows and tree swallows speeding low, and without collision with each other, over the lawns, parking lots and retention basin after flying insects to ingest and feed to their young in their nurseries.  
     Barn swallows mostly nest in barns and under bridges these days, though they traditionally have raised offspring on cliffs and in the mouths of shallow caves.  They build mud pellet nurseries on the sides of support beams and feed insects to their young.  The swallows on this campus came from nearby barns to catch flying insects. 
     Tree swallows hatch young in abandoned woodpecker holes and other tree cavities, and also in bird boxes erected for them and eastern bluebirds.  They, too, catch insects on the wing to consume and feed to their babies.  People of the church put out bird boxes to encourage the nesting of tree swallows and bluebirds.  Everyone likes nature in some way.
     I spotted a few other species of birds on that church campus.  A few each of American robins and purple grackles moved over the short grass in search of invertebrates.  A pair of Canada geese and their young wandered over a lawn and ate short grass, as sheep would.  And an eastern kingbird, that probably had a nest in one of the parking lot trees, repeatedly fluttered over the blacktop in pursuit of flying insects.   
     A stream, flanked on both sides by young trees, cattails and tall grass, flows through another back part of the campus.  There I saw several kinds of aquatic creatures, including fish-eating ones.  Large carp jumped partly out of the water to gulp down insects flying just over the water.  A belted kingfisher repeatedly dove headfirst from a tree after young carp and other minnows.  A couple of green herons stalked along the shores of the stream after frogs, tadpoles and small fish.  And I saw a snapping turtle swimming in the waterway.  Its food, too, would be mostly fish, including dead ones it can scavenge.  Although I didn't see any in that couple of hours, northern water snakes should also be in this stream where they would hunt fish, tadpoles and frogs. 
     And as I watched the kingfisher and herons hunting food, I saw a muskrat swimming across the stream, a few dragonflies darting over the water after flying insects to eat and a family of mallard ducks on the water along a shoreline.
     There are many other large campuses like this one, including those around schools, churches, corporate centers and other places.  And several kinds of adaptable wildlife find homes on those campuses where we humans can enjoy their close presence, beauties and intrigues.