Creekside Thicket Birds

     For an hour one sunny afternoon during the second week in April of this year, I visited a quarter-mile strip of a creek that closely parallels the country road I was on in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  The creek there is thinly-lined and sparsely-patched with thickets of young trees, including ash-leafed maples, silver maples, black walnuts, mulberries and river birches, and red-twigged dogwood shrubbery, all of which provide shelter and food for certain, adaptable kinds of wildlife in cropland.  That waterway and its thickets are an oasis for wild creatures. 
     At one little thicket of river birches, mulberries and red-twigged dogwoods right along the creek, I spotted a pair of northern cardinals, several common grackles and a few each of red-winged blackbirds and American robins foraging on the ground.  The striking cardinals were eating seeds, but the other birds were consuming invertebrates.
     Looking closer, I also saw several kinds of smaller birds on the ground under the cover of those woody plants.  These attractive, interesting birds, including a pair each of permanent resident song sparrows and Carolina wrens, a wintering winter wren, a few each of wintering white-throated and white-crowned sparrows, a migrating palm warbler, and a few migrant swamp sparrows, were eating invertebrates and seeds. But they were not easy to see because they blended into their soil and shrubbery background.  Woody-barked plants and little brush piles provide the cover that hold these birds to that thicket along a creek in a short-grass meadow.
     The handsome song sparrows and Carolina wrens particularly like to live and nest in brush heaps that offer protection to them and their offspring.  But song sparrows also raise young in grass nests in tall grass and low in shrubbery in thickets, perhaps reducing competition for food and shelter between these species.
     The male song sparrow and Carolina wren each sang beautifully on occasion to let his ownership of that thicket be known to the bird community, especially other males of their respective kinds.  In this way, the birds spread themselves out so they will have ample food to feed their young.   
     The little, brown song sparrows and Carolina wrens are like sandpipers when they roam the long, thin mudflats along waterways to pick up and eat invertebrates.  The sparrows also consume weed and grass seeds on those flats, again reducing rivalry for food with Carolina wrens.  
     The tiny, brown winter wren probably lived along this waterway all winter, where it fed on invertebrates it found in brush piles and among tree roots along stream banks.  It scurried about like a feathered mouse, darting in and out of brush piles and tree roots, as it looked for food.
     The handsome white-throated sparrows and white-crowned sparrows probably wintered in that creek-side thicket through that harshest of seasons, eating grass and weed seeds all winter.  But in a few weeks, they and the winter wren will migrate farther north to their nesting territories, not to return until the following autumn.
     I also saw two beautiful species of north-bound kinds of birds in that little creek-side thicket, including a palm warbler and a few swamp sparrows.  Both species inhabit bottomlands near water and look for invertebrates and seeds on the ground to eat.  The warbler also snares flying insects in mid-air.  Both these kinds of birds probably won't stay in that little thicket long, as they will continue their migrations farther north to rear offspring.  
     These are a few kinds of pretty, interesting bird species I spotted in a creekside thicket in April.  Some are permanent residents, while others are migrants.  But all are adapted to weedy, bottomland thickets along smaller waterways where they find food and shelter through the year.  I was happy to experience those little birds while they were here.