Birds' Nesting Activities

     In June, 2019, I was happy to see several intriguing kinds of birds, that I don't see every day, engaging in various nesting activities within a mile of home in New Holland, Pennsylvania.  Each species has its own niche, which reduces competition with other kinds of birds for nesting space and food.  All these birds are camouflaged, making them more difficult to spot in their habitats.  And most of them are here only in summer to raise young.
     I saw a female orchard oriole repeatedly carrying grass in her beak to a tree in a farmland meadow studded with trees.  Although I didn't see her nursery, I knew she was building one twenty feet up in that tree for her future babies.  Orchard orioles winter in Central and northern South America.
     In another pasture, a male willow flycatcher sang his "fitz-bew" song from a rail fence along a hedgerow of thickets where he and his mate intended to rear offspring.  Occasionally, between songs, he flew out after a flying insect in mid-air, which was entertaining to me.  This species winters from southern Mexico to Argentina.
     One evening, while parked in a parking lot near a row of young arborvitae trees in New Holland, I saw a pair of chipping sparrows copulating about six times in two minutes.  They probably were going to rear a second brood in one of those cedar trees.  They winter from the southern United States south to northern South America.
     For a couple of hours one afternoon, I visited a three-acre, bottomland woodlot that straddles a stream and is surrounded by farmland.  The riparian woods are dominated by ash-leafed maple trees, black walnuts and green ash.  And the woodlot floor is covered by jewelweeds and skunk cabbage.
     A pair of eastern phoebes were the first "summer-only" birds I saw in that woodlot.  They were catching flying insects in mid-air and shuttling those victims under a small bridge over the woodland stream, which was entertaining to me.  I didn't see their mud and moss cradle, but I knew it had to be filled with youngsters on a support beam under the bridge, which is where many pairs of phoebes nest.  Other pairs raise young in traditional niches; on a rock ledge, under an overhanging boulder near a stream in woods.  Phoebes winter in southern Mexico.
     A little later, I spotted a petite veery, which is a kind of spot-breasted thrush, beautifully perched on a fallen log in that bottomland woodlot.  Soon it hopped down from the log and ran and stopped, ran and stopped, over a bare patch of ground, as American robins do on lawns, to pick up invertebrates from the ground to feed its young.  With its beak full of food, the veery darted in low flight to a patch of jewelweeds, where its nest was probably on the ground and hidden from my view.  That bird, and its mate, repeated that activity time after time as I quietly watched.
     Male veeries sing a delightful, flute-like song that seems to spiral eerily downward.  Veeries winter in the Amazon rain forest.    
     And, in that same little woodlot, I spotted a Louisiana waterthrush bobbing and dancing along the stony, muddy shore of the stream in the woods.  There it was picking up aquatic invertebrates from under the stones on the water's edge and flying away with them to feed its youngsters.  Its cradle probably is dead-leaf-lined and in a crevice, behind tree roots, in a streambank.
     The waterthrushes' bobbing and dancing are other forms of camouflage because they mimic small debris bouncing in the current of a stream or brook.  Male waterthrushes have loud songs, which allows them to be heard above the music of running water.  And this species winters in Mexico, the West Indies and northern South America.
     These are some of the intriguing natural treasures I spotted close to home this summer.  Such treasures help make life more interesting.