Lovely Creations

     The afternoon of July 5, 2018, in and around New Holland, Pennsylvania, was hot, but beautiful, with blue skies patched with white, puffy, cumulus clouds, sunshine, and lots of green vegetation in suburbs, fields and distant wooden hills.  I drove south out of New Holland along South Kinzer Avenue that afternoon to enjoy the countryside scenery, as I have often done in the past.  I left the town's tree-dotted, suburban lawns and saw green fields, green, wooded hills and blue sky unfolding before me.  I had to stop the car a few minutes and stare because the peaceful scenery before me was so beautiful that I felt I was looking at God, or at least his works!  This has happened to me before, now and again, at any time of year, always unexpectantly, because of scenery so lovely as to take "my breath away".  There is great beauty even in habitats impacted by peoples' works.     
     Continuing on for only two miles, one way, in that countryside on July 5th, I crossed a couple of lovely, clear streams sliding through meadows and thickets.  A few red-winged blackbirds fluttered among tall grasses along one waterway, while a great blue heron stalked minnows in another.
     Driving on, I passed thickets of planted cranberry viburnum bushes and other shrubbery, and young trees in a had-been pasture, a 20 acre grove of planted red juniper trees standing over tall grass and a grove of large oak trees used as a picnic area.  All these habitats were pretty, but I saw little wildlife in them.
     But when I came to two farmland meadows, one across the rural road from the other, I saw a handful of interesting summer birds that nest in those pastures, each dotted with large white oak, red maple and black walnut trees.  I stopped off the road in the shade of a large walnut to check the meadows for wildlife.
     With binoculars, I soon saw a pair of striking red-headed woodpeckers with bright red heads and a northern flicker among dead limbs in the large, live trees.  There those birds hunt invertebrates; in dead wood, on the trees and from the ground; and nest in hollows they chip from dead wood.  Flickers mostly eat ants from ant hills in the ground.  And their feathering is mostly brown, which blends them into grass and soil on the ground for their protection.
     I also saw a pair of stunning eastern bluebirds and a family of trim-looking tree swallows, both species of which were perched on wire fences along the road.  Each of these species probably nested in abandoned woodpecker holes drilled into dead wood.  And both species ingest invertebrates during warmer months.  Bluebirds perch on tree twigs and fences to watch for insects in the air and on vegetation and the ground.  Tree swallows, however, catch flying insects in mid-air, sweeping and diving across fields and meadows to snare their prey in their large mouths.
     A pair of eastern kingbirds also perched on that wire fence, but farther down the road from the bluebirds and tree swallows.  Handsome in white "shirt" and dark "jackets", the kingbirds, like bluebirds, hustle out from perches to catch flying insects, then flutter back to their perch to ingest their victims and watch for more.  Kingbirds hatch young in grass and twig nurseries on top of forking twigs in lone trees in pastures and fields.
     And at the end of that two-mile trip, I came upon a field of planted, young spruce trees, surrounded by red clover, Queen-Anne-lace and chicory plants.  The red clover had pink blossoms, the 'lace had white ones, but the chicory was not blooming because they only flower in the morning during mid-summer.  But they have the prettiest flowers of all these three alien species originally from Eurasia.  Their blossoms are blue as a clear sky, and the pink, white and blue blooms make fields like this striking with blooming flowers.  They are a joy to see; more of God's creations.
     Readers can also see beautiful scenery like this.  Just get outside, almost wherever you happen to be and look around for God's lovely creations.