Creek Wildlife in November

     One afternoon early in November of this year, I visited a couple of my favorite spots along the shores of Mill Creek, where it flows slowly, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania farmland.  Each of those creekside locations have different habitats, causing them to also have different communities of wild plants and animals.
     At my first stop along Mill Creek, in an extensive short-grass meadow that afternoon in November, I saw about 3,000 stately Canada geese, a half dozen mallard ducks, at least 12 killdeer plovers, a pectoral sandpiper, an elegant great blue heron, a male belted kingfisher and a magnificent adult bald eagle. 
     The geese have wintered on and along the creek in that pasture for several years.  They feed on corn kernels in nearby harvested cornfields and the green shoots of winter rye in other fields.  Some winters, those Canadas are joined by flocks of snow geese, and one or two individuals each of white-fronted geese, brant geese and, maybe, a tundra swan, making an interesting mix of large waterfowl.  It's exciting to see and hear large, mixed flocks of bugling Canada geese and piping snow geese returning to this stretch of creek, group after group, after feeding in the fields on a winter's day.  Each gang of geese swings majestically into the wind to drift down into it to land gently on the creek or its surrounding, short-grass meadow.  
     The killdeer trot over the meadow and along the shores of the creek in search of invertebrates to eat.  They are robin-sized and well-camouflaged, making them difficult to see, even in open habitats.  
     There usually are at least a few killdeer in this meadow the year around; and they attract migrating shorebirds to the shores of Mill Creek in May and again in late summer, such as the pectoral sandpiper I saw the last time of was at that spot along Mill Creek.  Least sandpipers and lesser yellowlegs are the sandpiper species most likely to be along Mill Creek to poke their beaks into mud under the shallows to pull out invertebrates to ingest.  Eventually, all the shorebirds move on, except the killdeer, a few of which nest in that pasture.
     The three fish-catching birds I saw that afternoon, the heron, kingfisher and eagle, are species that spend the winter, in limited numbers, by creeks and ice-free ponds in Lancaster County cropland.  And these kinds of fish-catchers snare their prey in different ways, reducing competition for food among these species.  The heron cautiously waded the shallows of Mill Creek while watching for finny prey to snare with its long, sturdy beak.  Kingfishers either perch in limbs hanging over water, even deep water, or hover into the wind, as the one I saw was doing, in their search for small fish.  They dive beak-first into the water to grab fish in their bills.  And bald eagles perch on trees to look for larger fish to grab from the water's surface.  They grab their victims with their eight sharp, curved talons, without touching the water.           
     Overgrown thickets of red-twigged dogwoods and reed canary-grass, and floodplain trees, including ash-leafed maples and black walnuts, and crab apples, line the shores of my other favorite spot along Mill Creek.  During my visit there that afternoon in November, I saw a few mallards, two pairs of wood ducks, a muskrat, a pied-billed grebe and a kingfisher.  The beautiful woodies were left-over from nesting along that stretch of Mill Creek during the past summer.  They probably will soon migrate farther south for the winter. 
     The charming, and well-camouflaged, little grebe was a migrant from farther north or west in North America.  It was resting and fishing on Mill Creek before continuing its migration farther south.  The duck-like grebes fish by diving under water from the surface, using their legs to propel themselves forward.
     There also was a variety of small birds in the thickets along the banks of Mill Creek.  In time, I saw one each of permanent resident Carolina chickadee and song sparrow, and migrant ruby-crowned kinglet and eastern phoebe, and a pair of permanent resident northern cardinals among the thickets of dogwoods and tall grass.  They were in those thickets to find and consume small invertebrates or seeds, depending on the species of birds.  
     And there were a few each of permanent resident American robins, blue jays and cedar waxwings consuming the fruits of a crab apple tree.  These pretty birds were interesting to watch flying in and out of that tree, as some birds were filled with fruit and left, while hungry birds zipped into the tree to dine.  
     I only visited those two places along slow-moving Mill Creek for a little over two hours that November afternoon.  But I was rewarded with experiencing the food-getting activities of several kinds of interesting wild creatures in their lovely natural habitats.