Creatures in Our House

     One morning at the end of October, 2016, a Carolina wren flew into our bedroom by a window I opened a crack to cool the room and freshen its air here in New Holland, Pennsylvania.  Apparently, the wren squeezed through that crack to find a sheltered home for the winter, as that species of wren does.  But realizing its mistake, the wren flew around the room a few times, seemingly in a panic, and quickly exited by the same window I opened fully.  That wren caused me to remember other critters on the outside of our house, and in it, over the years.  Those creatures have been our closest neighbors.
     Several years ago, another Carolina wren got in the house by the same window (you would think I would have learned a lesson) and was chased all over the house by our Jack Russell terror (terrier).  The poor bird finally exited by an open door.
     Early in spring, during the last few years, we hear scratching on the outside of our two upstairs, window air conditioners.  That noise is made by several house sparrows on one conditioner and a pair of mourning doves on the other.  Both species are looking for sheltered nesting sites.  The sparrows chirp excitedly on their conditioner and the doves coo from theirs.
     One summer, we had a flowering geranium plant in a pot hanging on our front porch where rain could reach it.  Japanese beetles chewed the leaves off that plant, while a pair of mourning doves raised two young on that pot and the geranium grew back from its roots.
     A few other kinds of birds used our house at times over the years.  For the last few years, a pair of Carolina chickadees regularly enter an old dryer vent for the night, as they would a tree hollow.  At least twice, a pair of house finches built a nest and attempted to rear offspring on supports on our two awnings, one over the side door and the other above the back door.  One June day a male wood thrush sang on a red-twigged dogwood bush just inches from a living room window where I was sitting.  What a lovely concert of flute music from my own Central American ambassador.  Mallard ducks sometimes perch on our roof and gray catbirds have popped through the latticework under our deck, probably in search of a sheltered nesting spot there.  And one evening early in June, three recently fledged screech owls perched several minutes on three posts of our front porch railing.  
     We've had a few species of common mammals in or on our house over the years, including gray squirrels, a couple of little brown bats, house mice and deer mice.  The squirrels are characters, and entertaining.  They come on our porch and deck and scratch through potting soil in flower pots, either to bury nuts or to search for food.  Once a squirrel ripped out cushion stuffing from a porch chair, presumably to line her nursery.  And every autumn, grays take decorative Indian corn off our porch.
     We've had a couple of little brown bats in the house at different times.  One bat frightened everybody as it circled a bedroom in the middle of the night, searching for a way out of the house.  I went into the bedroom, shut the door and opened a window wide.  The next morning the bat was gone, much to our relief.
     We have had house mice and deer mice in our house at the start of some winters.  The best way to eliminate these little critters from the house is to live trap them and release them some distance from the house.
     Cottontail rabbits have had nests of young against our house at least a few times over the years.  And at least one adult cottontail lives under our deck during each day the year around.
     Several kinds of insects have been in the house, on our porch or on our deck over the years.  House flies and a kind of tiny ant are in the house every summer.  Fireflies that landed on us just before we came indoors fly slowly around the house, flashing their cold, abdominal lights, which I think is kind of neat.  Once we had a colony of yellow jackets in the basement, with an entrance through a wall to the outside.  Late that fall, however, the workers died and the queen buried herself somewhere in the soil of our yard, as all her kind do.  We never had that species in the house again.
     Big, black and yellow, female carpenter bees chewed round holes in the bottoms of our old, wooden porch railings, weakening those structures to the point they were finally removed.  There the bees raised larvae on flower nectar and pollen until they pupated and emerged as adults.
     All day, most every day during the summer of 2015, several honey bees landed on the damp potting soil of potted plants on our deck.  I think they were there to ingest moisture from that soil, or maybe they were consuming certain minerals from it.
     We have had several kinds of close animal neighbors at home over the years.  And everyone of them has made our lives richer.  Readers, too, can enjoy animal neighbors just by keeping a watch for them and tolerating their presence if you can.         
           
            
    

Feathered Kings on our Lawn

     One day this past April, I saw a handsome blue jay repeatedly gathering bits of food from our grassy lawn and tenderly feeding them to another jay as apart of their courtship.  Though the genders of blue jays are identical in feathering, I assumed by their behavior that the feeding bird was the male of the pair.  And a month later, I accidentally noticed the jays' twig, open-cup nursery, with young in it, on top of an eight-foot-tall red juniper tree on our lawn.  And because they are permanent residents in our neighborhood, a pair of blue jays raises young here every spring into early summer.      
     Of all the kinds of small birds on our lawn in New Holland, Pennsylvania, the adaptable, permanent resident blue jays have been "king" for the 29 years I've lived in that small town.  They are royalty to me in typical suburban areas because of their being larger than most other species of birds regularly on lawns at some time of the year or another.  And they are bold and often noisy like the crows they are related to.  They shrilly call " jay, jay" and can imitate the "keeee-youuuu" scream of red-shouldered hawks that mostly live in bottomland woods, as blue jays do, too.  But jays are silent during the nesting season because they don't want to attract attention to their young.
     Blue jays are strikingly handsome birds.  They are white below and mostly blue on top with black and white spots and streaking.  They also have white faces and throats, and a black collar on the back of the head from the crest down on both sides to, and tied under, the "chin".  Blue jays are particularly attractive when foraging for acorns among the red and brown foliage of pin oak trees and searching for beech nuts among the bronze leaves of American beech trees.  They are also beautiful when perched on coniferous trees laden with snow.  They spend winter nights huddled in some of those conifers as well.    
     Each blue jay collects pin oak acorns and beech nuts because those foods are small enough for the jay to handle.  The jay harvests one nut at a time with its black beak and flies away with it to either stash it in a tree cavity or to use its sturdy bill to push it into soft soil on woodland floors and/or grassy lawns.  Those nuts are eaten by the jay during winter.  But if the jay is killed by a hawk, for instance, or forgets some of the nuts it stuck into the ground, those nuts could grow into new trees. 
     Like their crow cousins, blue jays will eat about anything, including invertebrates, nuts, berries, grain, seeds and most anything else edible.  Jays mostly live and get food in woods and older suburbs with their many large trees and bushes.  They also enter nearby fields to eat waste corn kernels on the ground and readily visit bird feeders to consume grain and seeds.  They sometimes scavenge dead animals and can be predators at times.  Blue jays have been known to eat eggs and young right out of smaller birds' nests.  I once saw a jay killing a house sparrow by hammering the smaller bird with its stout beak.  
     Blue jays live throughout the eastern half of the United States and in very southeastern Canada.  Most jays of this species live permanently in one area, but some of the more northern populations migrate south in small, silent groups during October.  Spotting group after group of blue jays and other kinds of birds winging south over the colored leaves of deciduous woods is exciting and pleasurable.  
     Blue jays are my favorite lawn birds because they are attractive, adaptable and interesting to watch at home the year around.  Their wild, loud presence can be exciting, especially when they are calling shrilly from tree tops or loudly harassing a hawk or owl.  And they are handsome when hopping among colored foliage in quest of nuts in autumn, or perched on snow-heaped evergreen trees.  They are fun neighbors to have.

Ghost Crabs and Fiddler Crabs

     Over the years, I have seen interesting colonies of fiddler crabs at such distant places from each other as in sand at the Wetlands Institute in salt marshes at Stone Harbor, New Jersey, along the muddy shores of the brackish Delaware River at Delaware City in the state of the same name, and along the salty edges of a bay by the Atlantic Coast at Charleston, South Carolina.  I saw those two-inch-wide crabs during the day as they went about their business of feeding and courting.  And, of course, the most amazing part of seeing those crabs was the huge front claw on each male.  Claws they use to attract females and intimidate other males.
     While reading about fiddler crabs, I learned they are related to ghost crabs and have several characteristics in common with them.  Both species swiftly run sideways and live in burrows they dig themselves.  Both use front claws to shuttle food to their mouths, can live as long as two years and are about two inches across at maturity.  Each species sheds its shell several times as it grows, has two stalked eyes and breathes oxygen from the air by moist gills.  Both kinds are eaten by gulls, herons and other predators.  Males of both kinds compete ritually for the attention of receptive females and females of both types release eggs into water.  And one of the two front claws of both species is larger than the other.   
     Atlantic ghost crabs live in burrows up to four feet deep on sandy beaches, above the normal high tide line, along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts from Maine to southern Brazil.  Each tunnel has a living chamber at the end of it and a second burrow out so the crab isn't trapped in its own home.
     These ghost crabs are yellow or pale gray, the reason they are called "ghosts", to blend into their sandy habitat when abroad in search of food, especially during the day, though they are mostly nocturnal.  They ingest small clams, insects, baby sea turtles that hatched on certain beaches, decaying plants and detritus.
     Male ghost crabs make sounds by stamping their legs on the sand, probably as part of their courtship rituals.  And one front claw on both genders of this species is a bit larger than the other.  The related male fiddlers evolved that larger claw trait to its maximum.  They probably couldn't lift or carry that greatly enlarged front claw if it got any larger than it already is.
     Colonies of many fiddler crabs live on sandy beaches and brackish, tidal mud flats.  Each one has its own burrow, making the sand or mud look like Swiss cheese.  Fiddlers are active and quite visible during the day, if one knows when and where to look for them.  At that time they pick up little blobs of sand or mud with their smaller front claws and pass those materials to their mouths.  They glean alga, fungus, microbes and detritus from each mouthful of sand or mud and discharge little balls of the inedible materials.         
     Each adult male fiddler crab has one front claw that is much bigger than the other one, and about as large as his body.  He can't use it to shuttle food to his mouth, but he waves it in the air to beckon females of his kind to come to him for mating.  Female fiddlers choose to mate with a male with the biggest  front pincer and who most vigorously waves it, indicating the male's strength and health that he will pass along to his offspring.  The females' selections over many years promoted the evolution of the large claws on male fiddler crabs, though it is dangerous to be so obvious.
     Both these species of crabs are interesting to experience.  And since they evolved from a common ancestor, they are another example of function and structure changes that help insure survival.    

Wildlife in a Farmland Valley

     At dusk early one evening last December, while driving through a quarter-mile farmland and woodlot valley along a stretch of Mill Creek about a mile outside Lancaster City, Pennsylvania, I noticed a screech owl perched and silhouetted on a roadside wire.  As darkness gradually deepened, I stopped to watch that owl.  Within a few minutes, it dropped into a weedy field, presumably to catch a mouse.  And since it didn't come up again, I assumed it snared its intended prey in its sharp claws and was eating it.
     While watching the owl, I thought of other birds and mammals I experienced in that little valley when I regularly drove through it in the not so distant past.  In Winter, I almost always saw a resident flock of stately Canada geese in a harvested corn field or a lawn, either resting or eating corn kernels or blades of grass.  Sometimes they, as a group, would be in Mill Creek to rest, or in the air in their travels from place to place.  For several days early in March of one year, a boisterous flock of snow geese joined the noisy Canadas on a corn field and the lawn to consume grain and grass.  Both species of geese were majestic in the air and on the ground.    
     I almost always saw little gatherings of white-tailed deer in harvested corn fields in that valley at sunset in winter.  They were in the fields to ingest waste corn.  Sometimes, I saw Canada geese and white-tails in the corn fields at once, presenting a thrilling sight to any outdoors person.  The does were lithe and graceful, while big bucks, with elegant antlers, were magnificent fellows from November into January.  But at any sign of danger, all deer dashed off the fields with their tails lifted and wagging from side to side.  The white undersides of those signaling tails were the last of the deer to be seen as they ran into nearby wood lots.  But when running stopped and tails were lowered, they disappeared, a trick that could confuse would-be predators.
     Some birds I experienced only occasionally in this lowland along Mill Creek.  Sometimes at dusk in winter, I heard a pair of great horned owls hooting to each other as part of their courtship.  Once, I saw a horned owl fly from one wood lot to another.  Though silhouetted black before a brilliant, orange sunset, I identified it as a horned owl by its large head and seeming lack of a neck.
     Once I heard a barred owl hooting in that valley, but I didn't see it.  Barred owls inhabit woods near creeks and lakes.
     Sometimes I would see a great blue heron at any time of year wading on its long legs in Mill Creek to catch fish, frogs and crayfish.  Herons also have lengthy necks and beaks to snare their prey.
     Once on a winter's day I saw an adult bald eagle flying majestically down stream low over Mill Creek.  Needless to say, what a thrill that was!                    
     Once in winter, I saw a male northern harrier cruising back and forth, low over fields bordering Mill Creek and its thin, riparian woods of black walnut, and silver maple and ash-leafed maple trees.  That gray hawk was watching for mice and small birds to catch and eat.
     I saw a few kinds of mammals and signs of mammals in this valley.  I was thrilled to see a couple of handsome red foxes trotting along, one on a winter morning and another at dusk in that same season.  Those foxes were either hunting mice or mates, or both.
     One time, in summer, I saw a beautiful female mink swimming in Mill Creek in this valley.  She might have been hunting muskrats, fish or frogs to feed to young in a streamside den.
     I've seen raccoon tracks in mud along Mill Creek where those masked critters hunted frogs, crayfish and mussels at night.  Those ring-tails also consume berries, insects and just about anything edible.       
     A variety of small birds nest in this valley because of a diversity of habitats, including wood lots and an overgrown meadow of sapling trees and tall weeds and grasses.  Carolina chickadees, downy woodpeckers and house wrens are some of the birds that raise young in tree cavities in the woods.  Northern cardinals, song sparrows, American goldfinches and gray catbirds rear offspring in pasture thickets.  The goldfinches are also there because of patches of Canada thistles that produce seeds the goldfinches ingest and seed fluff the goldfinches use to build their soft, lovely nurseries.  
     But there also are a few kinds of birds of special note nesting in the abandoned pasture along Mill Creek and its riparian woods.  Two pairs of eastern bluebirds hatched young in tree cavities in the creek-side woods.  And at least one pair each of indigo buntings and orchard orioles raised chicks in open, grassy cradles, the indigos in a bush and the orioles in a young tree.
     I would see the male indigos singing from the tops of saplings and tall weeds.  And a couple of times I saw a whole orchard oriole family in that overgrown pasture, including the beautiful black and chestnut adult male himself!
     This little farmland valley is one of many in southeastern Pennsylvania.  And every one of them has a variety of intriguing wild creatures living in it because of a diversity of habitats.  One need only to visit one or more of these natural habitats to experience and enjoy a variety of interesting plants and wild animals in them and go home inspired by nature's beauties and diversity.    
    

Woodland Hawks in Southeastern Pennsylvania

     A few kinds of hawks in southeastern Pennsylvania, including red-tails, American kestrel's and Cooper's, have adapted to living and nesting in farmland, and older suburban areas with their many tall trees.  But other kinds of hawks, including goshawks, broad-wings and red-shoulders, still winter or nest in this area's woodlands.
     I have been thrilled to see two wintering goshawks so far in my lifetime.  Both birds were flying low and fast, with quick, powerful wingbeats through maturing forests in southeastern Pennsylvania.  They do that to surprise, flush up and catch a variety of woodland birds and mammals, including ruffed grouse, blue jays and squirrels. 
     Goshawks are exciting to see hunting in the woods.  But they are only in this part of Pennsylvania during winter, and not every winter at that.  They only migrate south when food is scarce in northern forests where they raise young.
     Goshawk pairs nest high in trees in the northern, mixed forests of Eurasia and North America.  In America, they hatch young across Alaska and Canada, in New England, down the Rocky Mountains and down the Appalachians to Maryland.  They fiercely protect their young from all comers.
     Goshawks are large, heavy birds that are bigger than crows.  Adults are gray on top and finely-barred gray below.  The young, however, are brown above and brown-flecked underneath.  And both genders and all ages have a broad, white stripe above each eye, back to the upper neck.
     Broad-winged hawks only nest in deciduous woods in the eastern United States.  They winter in Central America and northern South America.  Arriving in southeastern Pennsylvania in mid-April, they quickly pair, prepare stick nurseries high in woodland trees and raise young until they leave their cradles late in July.  Broadies feed on frogs, snakes, mice, insects, small birds and other critters in the woods.       
     Starting in September, broad-wings migrate in spectacular flocks of themselves out of the United States to wintering areas in Central and South America.  Each sunny morning during that month, broadies rise from tree tops in the woods where they spent the night and search for rising columns of warmed air called thermals.  When each broad-wing feels the rising of a thermal, it enters it and is spiraled higher and higher by the warm air.  More and more broadies enter the thermal until it is filled with many raptors spinning upward.  At the zenith of the thermal, the broadies peel off in long lines or flocks and head southwest, soaring high above the ground for mile after mile with little effort.  But gravity pulls them down and so the broad-wings are obliged to find another thermal and another, all day, day after day of their migration southwest to their wintering places.
     As a species, red-shouldered hawks are permanent residents in southeastern Pennsylvania's wet, bottomland woods.  And there is where they nest, in stick nurseries in the tree tops.  Their summer range is all of the eastern United States and most of them winter in the southeastern United States.  
     Adult red shoulders are pretty hawks, being robin-red underneath, with black and white stripes on their upper wings and tails and having rufous-red "shoulder" patches.  Immatures, however, are brown on top and brown-streaked on white below, which camouflages them.  And like broad-wings, red-shoulders mostly perch in ambush to catch and ingest frogs, snakes, mice, insects and other small critters in the woods.  Broadies and red-shoulders might compete a bit for food in bottomland woods, though broadies are not restricted to that habitat as red-shoulders are.  
     Though not seen as much as farmland hawks, these woodland hawks are an exciting part of southeastern Pennsylvania's avifauna.  They can be spotted with stealth and patience at the times they are living in this part of the state, and elsewhere across much of North America. 

Nature in Fall

     On November 2, 2016, I went looking for highlights of nature in farmland and wood lots around Honey Brook in Chester County, Pennsylvania.  I made two stops where meadows, woodlots and small waterways mingle in bottomlands.  The weather that day was delightful with clear skies, warm temperatures and little wind.  And autumn leaves were at their peak of beautiful colors in woodlots  and on distant wooded hills.
     Stop one was a mix of a small pasture overgrown with reed canary-grass and multiflora rose bushes that bordered a brook, all under an open canopy of several tall silver maple and black alder trees.  The rose bushes had many red berries that will feed deer mice and berry-eating birds, including northern mockingbirds, American robins and cedar waxwings, during the coming winter.  The alders had many decorative, tightly-closed catkins (male flowers) hanging from twigs that will open and undulate in the wind next March.  The alders also had small, woody cones with tiny seeds in them that will feed seed-eating sparrows and finches through winter.  
     I saw a few species of birds during the hour I visited that little meadow, including a pair of Carolina chickadees, a few house finches, a song sparrow, a pair of northern cardinals, a few white-throated sparrows, a pine warbler and a family of about six tufted titmice.  The chickadees, titmice, finches, cardinals and song sparrow are all permanent residents of that overgrown, tree-studded meadow and its surrounding cropland.  But the white-throats and pine warbler are migrants or winter residents only. 
     While I was there, the house finches were feasting on ragweed seeds on the dried plants.  The white-throats scratched among fallen leaves for invertebrates and seeds under those leaves.  The titmouse family was all over the alders in search of tiny invertebrates to eat.  The feeding activities of those birds made this little pasture the more interesting. 
     I made a second stop a few miles from the first one because I saw an adult red-headed woodpecker land on a wooden fence post near the road just as I drove by that post.  Quickly stopping along the side of the road, I noticed two adult red-heads on a dead tree in a small pasture studded with living pin oak and red maple trees.  The maples' leaves were breathtakingly red, especially against the blue sky.  The woodpeckers' feathers on their wings and bodies were black and white patterned, and their heads were completely, strikingly red!  Both woodpeckers were actively catching flying insects in mid-air, as their species often does.
     A pair of red-tailed hawks were perched in different trees in a nearby, colorful woodlot of red maples mostly.  Those hawks probably were quietly watching for gray squirrels gathering acorns and storing them for winter use in tree cavities and holes the squirrels dig into the ground.  Any squirrel caught off guard could be caught and eaten by the hawks.  If that happens, some of the acorns buried in the soil could sprout into new trees.
     Meanwhile, three lovely blue jays were taking turns gathering and flying away with pin oak acorns in their beaks to that same red maple wood lot.  There they will stash those nuts in tree hollows or in shallow holes in the soil of the woods.  The jays make those holes in the ground with their beaks and push a nut into each one of them.  But if a jay is killed or forgets where it buried acorns in the ground, those nuts could develop into young trees, if squirrels and mice don't find them first.  
     A flock of about 20 mourning doves and a gathering of around 30 purple grackles were feeding on the ground among each other where the meadow and woodlot met.  The doves were eating weed seeds while the grackles were consuming invertebrates and seeds.  The grackles constantly flipped fallen leaves over to uncover those food items. 
     I thought this was an intriguing, enjoyable nature trip in the beauties of colored leaves, nice weather and interesting birds.  It's days like this that are inspiring and uplifting.  Anyone can enjoy nature most anytime, anywhere.  One just has to get out to experience it and let it work its wonders. 

Dark Birds in Flight

     In the morning of October 28, 2016, I was driving through Lancaster County, Pennsylvania farmland.  It was a typical late-October day of clear skies and blustery, cold wind.  Suddenly I saw about a dozen turkey vultures and a few black vultures maneuvering together into the wind, and a tattered line of American crows struggling into the wind over the farmland.  It was interesting to see the turkey vultures rocking from side to side a bit on their outstretched, slightly tipped-up wings to cope with the wind while soaring and the black vultures' usual flight pattern of alternately soaring and flapping their wings as if in a panic.  The crows recently came south from their nesting areas in Canada to spend the winter here, as they do every late-October.
     Continuing on, I saw a half dozen, probably different, turkey vultures maneuvering masterfully in the strong wind over rye fields, harvested corn fields and a field of orange pumpkins.  Then I saw more, and more, turkey vultures, which finally numbered to about 20 individuals, with a few black vultures among them.  It was entertaining to see that many vultures, which are large and dark, tacking and tipping masterfully in the wind.
     Something dead must have been in a rye field because six of the turkey vultures landed in that field and were pulling on something, though I couldn't see what because of the blades of rye.  And I didn't want to walk out there and disturb those big birds.  With my 16 power binoculars, I noticed two of the turkey vultures were young of this year.  They had gray faces rather than the red faces of adults.     
     Meanwhile, a few ragged lines of crows struggled by into the wind.  Those airborne crow flocks were a bit scattered because of the wind tossing the crows about.  But the crows were looking for harvested corn fields to land on and eat kernels of corn left on the fields after the harvests.
     Another mile down a country road, I saw a flock of a few thousand purple grackles in a corn field where they were eating invertebrates and waste corn kernels, which is what grackles do at this time of year.  The grackles in that large gathering fed for a few minutes, then took to the air in a great, dark mass, swirled over the fields a minute, then dropped to another harvested corn field.  At one point, a red-tailed hawk repeatedly dove into the wind and into the flock of airborne grackles, either for fun or to catch a meal, or both.  But I didn't see the hawk catch a grackle.
     During summer and into the fall, post-breeding purple grackles gather into larger and larger groups which is how they spend the winter from our latitude south in the United States.  Daily their great congregations seek corn kernels and other edibles in farmland and roost on winter nights in stands of tall coniferous trees.  
     In the morning of October 31, 2016, I was driving on another country road in Lancaster County farmland.  Again the wind was cold and the sky was clear.  The foliage on distant wooded hills and in farmland wood lots was at its peak of warm colors.  It was another typical, beautiful autumn day.  As I drove, I saw a column of turkey vultures as high as a small mountain in the blue sky.  There must have been over 30 swirling vultures in that feathered pillar.  And, interestingly, there were about six red-tailed hawks and a few black vultures among those circling turkey vultures.  When I stopped to observe that feathered column more closely, I noticed two large, dark birds that I suspected were bald eagles.  Looking at them with 16 power field glasses, I saw they were, indeed, immature balds that were chasing each other across the sky and low over the fields.  What a thrill to see those two magnificent birds so close, and in binoculars!
     All those large, scavenging birds were attracted to a chicken farm of two, long chicken houses.  Some chickens die on those farms and are dumped in fields with manure, providing meals for scavenging birds and mammals.  A few turkey vultures were perched on the chicken houses as if waiting for lunch.        
     It was inspiring to experience gatherings of these large, dark birds in flight and on Lancaster County fields.  Each species went about its daily routine for this time of year.  And each species is well adapted to farmland, a human-made habitat, to get food.  People unwittingly provided that habitat, which benefits the birds' getting food from it, and benefits us in that we see these awe-inspiring birds daily through fall and winter.