Intriguing natural activities happen during evenings in southeastern Pennsylvania, many of which I experienced. All these unforgettable events are entertaining, interesting, and inspiring to me in these times of bad news. They help make life more enjoyable.
Occasionally at dusk during January and February, when a couple of inches of snow are on the ground, I cruise country roads to watch for groups of stately white-tailed deer emerging slowly
from shadowy, gray woodlands and entering alfalfa and winter rye fields to graze on those crops. Snow, and moonlight, makes the gathering deer stand out majestically, as dusk silently fades to the darkness of night.
Starting about mid-afternoon every day from November to March, for the last several years, noisy rivers of American crows that nested in Canada, pour across the sky from every direction to converge on trees at Park City Shopping Mall, just outside Lancaster City. Those great floods of crows are especially striking when silhouetted in front of brilliant winter sunsets. And as those sunsets fade to twilight, the last of the crows are winging toward Park City to join their still-cawing hordes of relatives on overnight roosts.
Many evenings from mid-February to the middle of March, hordes of migrant snow geese leave harvested corn fields and winter rye fields, where they fed on corn kernels on the ground, sometimes under a thin cover of snow, and the green blades of rye, and fly back to the 400-acre impoundment at Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area where they will rest, preen their feathers and socialize. People at Middle Creek's lake see masses of snow geese flying silhouetted against the darkening sky, flock after boisterous flock, like wavelets sliding up a beach. And, with each bird setting its wings like parachutes, the great, clamoring flocks swing down into the wind, one after another, as if on an aerial waterfall to the water. What a wild, inspiring sight snow geese are. But by mid-March they are off through Canada, little by little, until they reach their nesting territories on the Arctic tundra.
But 600,000 migrant sandhill cranes, settling each evening from mid-March to the middle of April on the broad, shallow channels of the Platte River in southcentral Nebraska, outdo flocks of snow geese in sheer numbers and awesome pageantry. Late each afternoon, sandhill flocks leave harvested corn fields and start returning to the Platte to spend the night standing on gravel bars and braids of shallow water. By sunset, they return to the Platte in ever-increasing, silhouetted numbers and begin to fill the sky with their noisy, river-circling flocks. One can see flock after flock of them in the distance coming to the Platte from all directions. Meanwhile, silhouetted masses of them are closer to the river, and still other groups are circling the river or landing on it, all the while calling hoarsely. Flocks of cranes continue to return to the river until darkness envelopes them from our view.
Sandhill cranes winter in southern Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. In March they start migrating north to Canada and Alaska, but stop at the Platte River to spend days eating waste corn kernels in harvested Nebraska corn fields before continuing north to raise young.
Every evening late in March and through much of April, groups of male spring peeper frogs peep shrilly and gatherings of male American toads trill musically in wetlands and the shallows of pools and ponds in southeastern Pennsylvania, and throughout much of the eastern United States. The primeval calls of these amphibians are audible for some distance and are a joy and inspiration to hear on sunny, spring evenings. And that wild, ancient calling, of course, brings the genders of each species together to spawn.
Bats of various kinds create natural spectacles at dusk during summer evenings, including here in southeastern Pennsylvania. They perform all kinds of entertaining sweeps, loops and dives to catch flying insects, much to many peoples' enjoyment.
Millions of winged mayflies fly up in tremendous swarms from the Susquehanna River to breed and spawn eggs in one day and night back into the river. They spent a year on the rocky bottom of the river as larvae feeding on aquatic invertebrates. But in one 24 hour period they filled the air, trees, buildings, outdoor lights, and everything else with themselves and spawned, or fed many birds and bats, or made roads slippery with their crushed bodies.
Right after sunset and into the dark of each evening in late June and through much of July in southeastern Pennsylvania, and across the eastern United States, millions of male fireflies crawl up grass stems and launch themselves into slow, hovering flight. All that while each firefly flashes his cold, abdominal light as he goes to attract the attention of female fireflies still among grass stems.
Those wonderful, blinking beetle lights bring the genders together for mating. But to us human observers, those twinkling, evening lights are enchanting, and enjoyable to experience on warm, summer nights.
Right after every sunset late in July and during August and September, millions of male true katydids rub their wings together in the treetops to make a rasping sound that sounds like "Katy-did". Those scratchy stridulations bring the genders together for mating in the treetops. Katydids consumed tree leaves all summer before spawning, but October frosts kill them. Then their species survives only in the egg stage through winter.
Post-breeding chimney swifts roost together at night in large chimneys, with scores or hundreds of them in each chimney. Swifts catch flying insects all day, but at dusk they congregate about their roosting chimneys to spend each night in them until they migrate in early September to northern South America to avoid the northern winter.
Each August evening, hundreds of swifts circle again and again around their roosting chimney. But as darkness deepens, many swifts dive into the chimney with each pass of their feathered wheel over that human-made chasm. Soon all the birds are clinging upright with their tiny, sharp claws to the inner walls of their chimneys and all is quiet on the outside.
During September nights of a full moon, or nearly so, one can train a scope on the moon as it "moves" slowly across the sky. With patience, one can see small, migrating birds passing silhouetted before the moon at irregular intervals as they migrate to Central and South America to seek reliable food sources during the northern winter. Seeing some of those birds is always a thrill!
These natural, evening spectacles are entertaining, enjoyable and inspiring. They are a joy to experience.
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