For a few days early in June of this year, my wife, Sue, and I visited Cape May County, New Jersey. We mostly explored natural areas, including beaches, and salt marshes between the barrier beaches and the mainland, not by bush wacking, but from people-use areas, as many people would see that region. Anybody who looks for nature a little will see the same obvious creatures we did.
Always abundant, attractive and on the move in search of food, laughing gulls almost undoubtedly will be the first creatures seen and heard in Cape May County. They have a loud, characteristic call that sounds like someone laughing.
Laughing gulls visit beaches, boardwalks and parking lots where they scavenge people food, salt marshes where each pair raises about three young, fields where they eat earthworms and other invertebrates and coastal waters of the Atlantic Ocean and Delaware Bay where they get aquatic food, including live and dead fish. Laughing gulls are THEE gulls of the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts from Massachusetts to Texas, including Chesapeake and Delaware Bays and much of Florida.
The extensive, grassy salt marshes between the barrier beaches and the wooded mainland from Cape May north to Ocean City are flat and veined with tidal channels. Salt water surges in and out of these channels along with the ocean tides. Sometimes the channels are full of water and other times they are only half-full, with much exposed mud flats on both sides of each one.
We visited the salt marshes around Cape May, Wildwood and Stone Harbor a few times. The birds we saw mostly in those marshes were the large, white great egrets and snowy egrets, which were there to catch fish, crabs and other critters. Great egrets are twice the size of snowies and both species could be seen from a distance.
We saw other kinds of birds in and over those same salt marshes in those few days in June. We saw a group of nine glossy ibis poking their long, decurved beaks into the mud under the grass to catch crabs, worms and other types of invertebrates. Incidentally, we also saw another gathering of seven ibis poking into a large, fresh-water puddle on somebody's lawn to get food.
We saw several individual ospreys flying, soaring and hovering over the salt marsh channels in their search for large fish to catch and eat, and feed to their young. These ospreys nest on flat platforms erected in the marshes by people to help ospreys increase their populations. When an osprey spots a vulnerable fish it dives headfirst to the water and catches the prey with its curved, sharp talons, splashing on the water's surface in the process. Then it lifts from the water with mighty wing beats and flies to a perch to eat its catch or feed it to its offspring.
We saw several male red-winged blackbirds, that were splendid in their black feathering with red shoulder patches, singing "o-ka-lee" from phragmites and the tops of bushes and trees on the edges of the salt marshes. We only saw a few female red-wings in their brown and black-streaked plumage, but they were busy with nest-building among the phragmites or setting on eggs or small young.
We also saw a few common terns hovering over salt marsh channels to watch for small fish and diving into the water when a finny victim was spotted. We saw a willet snaring invertebrates in the mud of a salt marsh pool. Willets are a kind of large sandpiper that has a nesting population in salt marshes along the east coast. A clapper rail was spotted walking along a mud flat near salt marsh grasses in its search for invertebrates in the exposed mud before the water comes back. And an adult bald eagle was seen over a salt marsh where it probably was searching for fish to catch, or steal from an osprey.
Diamond-backed terrapins are in these salt marshes, but we didn't see any on this visit to Cape May. The Wetlands Institute, located in a salt marsh just outside Stone Harbor, is restoring the terrapin's population by protecting nests of eggs in the sand with wire covers to keep raccoons, gulls and herons from eating the eggs and newly-hatched young. And personnel from that institute get viable eggs from road-killed females and hatch and raise the young until they are big enough not to be readily eaten by predators.
Sue and I saw a few remaining spawning horseshoe crabs, which are not really crabs, on Delaware Bay beaches near where the bay empties into the ocean. A handful of laughing gulls attended those prehistoric critters to eat as many of their eggs as they could. A couple of weeks ago, many thousands of horseshoe crabs were on the beaches of both sides of Delaware Bay to spawn millions of little green eggs. Then thousands of laughing gulls and tens of thousands of sandpipers of at least four kinds, least sandpipers, sanderlings, red knots and ruddy turnstones, were on hand to eat those eggs, creating a unique natural spectacle for several days. The shorebirds used the energy from those ingested eggs to make the last part of their trip from South America and the Caribbean to the Arctic tundra to raise young.
While on Cape May beaches we also saw a few each of flying black skimmers and common terns and one least tern. These related birds nest on beaches and catch small fish from large bodies of water along the coast, the skimmers in a unique way. Skimmers' lower mandibles are longer than their upper ones. They poke the tip of their lower mandible in the water and fly just above the water. When a small fish bumps their mandibles, skimmers snap their beaks shut, thus capturing the prey.
We also saw several surfacing bottle-nosed dolphins from Sunset Beach where Delaware Bay pours into the Atlantic. Those whale relatives are always a treat to see, partly because one doesn't see them every day, though I have seen dolphins from beaches at Hilton Head and Charleston, South Carolina, and the outer banks of North Carolina.
Groups of these dolphins swim along under water, each mammal surfacing about every twelve or more seconds to exhale and inhale air, then diving under again and moving forward. They often travel near coastlines, the reason they are sometimes noticed from beaches.
Bottle-nosed dolphins are the most common of dolphins in North America. They are gray, up to twelve feet long, with a beak about three inches long. They mostly eat fish and squid.
We saw a few each of fish crows and boat-tailed grackles around Cape May and the marshes around it, and a thriving purple martin colony by the parking lot at Cape May Point State Park. Scores of martins were constantly flying toward and away from their grouping of purple martin nest boxes, making an entertaining, inspiring spectacle.
Northern mockingbirds were everywhere in abundance wherever there were thickets of bushes and vines, in the towns and countryside. We would see them on lawns, flying across streets and flitting into jungles of shrubbery. And, sometimes, we would hear them sing.
And we saw a beautiful, healthy female box turtle safely cross a rural road. She probably was looking for a place to lay her three to five eggs in a hole she would dig in the sandy soil since June is turtle nesting season.
All these animals we saw by casually looking for them. Anyone can do the same in Cape May County, New Jersey.
Friday, June 17, 2016
Wednesday, June 15, 2016
Mill Creek at Mascot in Summer
Mill Creek at the hamlet of Mascot in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania is an oasis of slow-moving creek a quarter mile long, along a narrow wetland under a thin, battered riparian woods completely surrounded by farmland. One side of this waterway is bordered by short-grass pastures and a small, slender public park of short grass and a few trees. The other side is a small, lean wildlife sanctuary because of its abundance of protective vegetation. The ground level of this sanctuary is dominated by skunk cabbage, reed canary-grass, stinging nettle and spotted jewelweeds. Elderberry bushes and gray-stem dogwoods compose much of the shrub level and black walnut, ash-leafed maple, silver maple, crab apple and mulberry trees dominate the canopy. Virginia creeper and poison ivy vines crawl high up the trees.
Skunk cabbage plants are a moisture-loving species of bottomland forests. This plant, however, adapts to sunnier conditions when woodland canopies are removed, if the ground moisture remains.
Some dead, but still-standing, trees at Mascot are riddled with old woodpecker holes. A few kinds of small, woodlands birds, such as permanent resident Carolina chickadees, tufted titmice and summering house wrens nest in some of those tree hollows.
By the middle of May, a few female wood ducks hatch broods of about 12 young each in larger tree cavities or in wood duck nest boxes erected for them. I see these broods of ducklings growing up now and then during each summer.
A few pairs of red-winged blackbirds nest in the tall reed canary-grass, a grass that grows well in sunlight. Singing males swaying on the tall grasses are handsome in their black feathering and red shoulder patches. Those males drive crows and other would-be predators away from young red-wings and help feed the offspring. Brown, dark-striped female red-wings build grassy nests they attach to reed canary-grass stems a few feet above the ground. They also do the bulk of feeding their chicks in their nurseries and after the young fledge.
A pair of spotted sandpipers, a species of shorebird that nests inland throughout most of the Lower 48 States, catches and eats invertebrates on the dam of this creek, its shorelines and trees fallen into the water. Spotty pairs also raise young along this creek, as they do by most other waterways and impoundments in the United States.
Every summer, a pair or two of rough-winged swallows builds cradles of grass in drainage pipes in the retaining wall of the dam. This nesting niche is a substitute for the swallows' tradition of digging holes in streambanks to raise young. Rough-wings zip over the water and nearby fields and pastures to catch flying insects to ingest.
A pair or two each of summering Baltimore orioles, cedar waxwings and eastern kingbirds rear offspring in riparian trees by the creek. Each species consumes a variety of invertebrates and feed them to their youngsters. Waxwings and kingbirds fly out from twig perches to snare flying insects. Female orioles make beautiful, deep pouches of grasses, twigs and vines on twigs at the tips of branches hanging over the creek.
Permanent resident northern cardinals, song sparrows and American goldfinches and summering gray catbirds and willow flycatchers nest in streamside shrubbery. All these birds, except the goldfinches, feed on invertebrates. The goldfinches consume thistle seeds and other kinds of seeds.
Carp and bluegill sunfish spawn during May and into June in the slow-moving shallows of this creek. The carp thrash and splash in the shallow shores of the creek.
Several bluegill nests in a cluster are visible in inches-deep water near the dam. Each male removes alga and dead leaves from the bottom of the waterway to make a nursery about a foot in diameter. Each nest is guarded by the male that made it. And when a female bluegill swims over a nest, its constructor swims tightly around and around with her and fertilizes her eggs as they exit her and settle in the nest. In this way, each male bluegill courts as many females as he can. Meanwhile, he guards the eggs and small fry in the nest from other fish, including his own kind.
Other kinds of cold-blooded, aquatic creatures inhabit this part of Mill Creek and are active and visible in summer. Male green frogs and bull frogs croak and bellow respectively in May, June and July. A few snapping turtles are here, forever searching for prey. Bluet damselflies and green darner and white-tailed dragonflies cruise low over the water in search of mates, and flying insects to eat.
Adult dragonflies are large and entertaining insects when in flight. And many of them have attractive colors. But they are harmless to people.
A few kinds of creatures have put in cameo appearances in summer in the sanctuary along Mill Creek at Mascot. I once saw two white-tailed deer in a thicket by the creek. Another time, I saw a moorhen stalking invertebrates among the reed canary-grass along the shore of the waterway. I wondered if it nested there? And one summer, I saw an adult bald eagle perched in a large tree over the creek and stalking fish. This might have been one of a pair of eagles feeding young in a nest a mile away from Mascot.
That short, thin strip of riparian woods and wetland in the middle of extensive cropland at Mascot is a wildlife sanctuary in name and reality. It is amazing how much adaptable life can be found in an oasis of natural shelter and food, almost no matter where it is located and how little it may be. Wherever a species of life's needs are met, that species will be there.
Skunk cabbage plants are a moisture-loving species of bottomland forests. This plant, however, adapts to sunnier conditions when woodland canopies are removed, if the ground moisture remains.
Some dead, but still-standing, trees at Mascot are riddled with old woodpecker holes. A few kinds of small, woodlands birds, such as permanent resident Carolina chickadees, tufted titmice and summering house wrens nest in some of those tree hollows.
By the middle of May, a few female wood ducks hatch broods of about 12 young each in larger tree cavities or in wood duck nest boxes erected for them. I see these broods of ducklings growing up now and then during each summer.
A few pairs of red-winged blackbirds nest in the tall reed canary-grass, a grass that grows well in sunlight. Singing males swaying on the tall grasses are handsome in their black feathering and red shoulder patches. Those males drive crows and other would-be predators away from young red-wings and help feed the offspring. Brown, dark-striped female red-wings build grassy nests they attach to reed canary-grass stems a few feet above the ground. They also do the bulk of feeding their chicks in their nurseries and after the young fledge.
A pair of spotted sandpipers, a species of shorebird that nests inland throughout most of the Lower 48 States, catches and eats invertebrates on the dam of this creek, its shorelines and trees fallen into the water. Spotty pairs also raise young along this creek, as they do by most other waterways and impoundments in the United States.
Every summer, a pair or two of rough-winged swallows builds cradles of grass in drainage pipes in the retaining wall of the dam. This nesting niche is a substitute for the swallows' tradition of digging holes in streambanks to raise young. Rough-wings zip over the water and nearby fields and pastures to catch flying insects to ingest.
A pair or two each of summering Baltimore orioles, cedar waxwings and eastern kingbirds rear offspring in riparian trees by the creek. Each species consumes a variety of invertebrates and feed them to their youngsters. Waxwings and kingbirds fly out from twig perches to snare flying insects. Female orioles make beautiful, deep pouches of grasses, twigs and vines on twigs at the tips of branches hanging over the creek.
Permanent resident northern cardinals, song sparrows and American goldfinches and summering gray catbirds and willow flycatchers nest in streamside shrubbery. All these birds, except the goldfinches, feed on invertebrates. The goldfinches consume thistle seeds and other kinds of seeds.
Carp and bluegill sunfish spawn during May and into June in the slow-moving shallows of this creek. The carp thrash and splash in the shallow shores of the creek.
Several bluegill nests in a cluster are visible in inches-deep water near the dam. Each male removes alga and dead leaves from the bottom of the waterway to make a nursery about a foot in diameter. Each nest is guarded by the male that made it. And when a female bluegill swims over a nest, its constructor swims tightly around and around with her and fertilizes her eggs as they exit her and settle in the nest. In this way, each male bluegill courts as many females as he can. Meanwhile, he guards the eggs and small fry in the nest from other fish, including his own kind.
Other kinds of cold-blooded, aquatic creatures inhabit this part of Mill Creek and are active and visible in summer. Male green frogs and bull frogs croak and bellow respectively in May, June and July. A few snapping turtles are here, forever searching for prey. Bluet damselflies and green darner and white-tailed dragonflies cruise low over the water in search of mates, and flying insects to eat.
Adult dragonflies are large and entertaining insects when in flight. And many of them have attractive colors. But they are harmless to people.
A few kinds of creatures have put in cameo appearances in summer in the sanctuary along Mill Creek at Mascot. I once saw two white-tailed deer in a thicket by the creek. Another time, I saw a moorhen stalking invertebrates among the reed canary-grass along the shore of the waterway. I wondered if it nested there? And one summer, I saw an adult bald eagle perched in a large tree over the creek and stalking fish. This might have been one of a pair of eagles feeding young in a nest a mile away from Mascot.
That short, thin strip of riparian woods and wetland in the middle of extensive cropland at Mascot is a wildlife sanctuary in name and reality. It is amazing how much adaptable life can be found in an oasis of natural shelter and food, almost no matter where it is located and how little it may be. Wherever a species of life's needs are met, that species will be there.
Tuesday, June 14, 2016
Local Extraordinary Nests
Every nest is a secret that should be left alone. But some bird nurseries are found by accident and the beauty and miracle that went into each one is inspiring. And many are seen in winter when the foliage is off deciduous trees and bushes.
The nests of several kinds of small birds nesting in southeastern Pennsylvania, as elsewhere in North America, are beautiful and/or unusual, lending more touches of intrigue to this overly populated area. Most of the bird species that make those lovely cradles are camouflaged and eat invertebrates during the warmer months when those little creatures are available. And all bird species create their lovely cradles by instinct. They are born with the knowledge of nest building.
Female Baltimore orioles are famous for their unique and beautiful pouches swinging from the twiggy tips of tree branches that hang over meadows, water, roads and other open habitats. Each oriole weaves rootlets, twigs and grasses through each other and over the supporting twigs to attach their three-inch-deep creations to them.
The lovely nurseries of American goldfinches are mostly made of thistle seed down. In fact, female goldfinches generally don't build nests until July when thistle plants develop seeds, each one with a fluffy parachute that carries it away on the wind.
The soft, beautiful goldfinch cradles are composed of thistle down and fine grasses, and held together and attached to twigs on a young tree by spider webs. Goldfinches mostly eat thistle seeds and other seeds as they become available.
The only blue-gray gnatcatcher nests I have ever seen are those blown to the ground by strong wind. Gnatcatchers are tiny birds of wooded bottomlands. Females make their pretty, little cradles of plant down, fine grass and bits of lichens and bind them together, and to twigs, with spider webbing. The lichens on the outside walls help camouflage those nests.
The tiny, lovely nurseries of ruby-throated hummingbirds are nearly impossible to see perched on top of thin limbs. But if spotted, each one looks like a little fairy bed on a small branch. Only an inch and a half across, ruby-throats' soft cradles are made of plant fibers and lichens and, again, bound together and to the branch by spider webs. Hummingbirds ingest nectar and tiny insects.
Chipping sparrows make pretty, little nurseries of fine grasses, lined with hair, where available. Most chippers build their nests in planted, young arborvitae trees that have flattened, closely packed needles that create great shelter against predators and the weather.
The pretty, little cradles of red-eyed vireos and Acadian flycatchers, as examples of their respective families, are made of grass, rootlets and plant fibers and suspended below thin, forked twigs at the ends of limbs. They are held in shape and attached to supporting twigs by, you guessed it, spider webbing. Spiders, obviously, are important to many kinds of small birds that build little nurseries to hatch their young in.
Chimney swifts build platforms of small twigs on the inside walls of chimneys in towns and cities. They use their saliva as a strong glue to bind the twigs to each other and to a wall.
Swifts originally nested down the inside of hollow, broken-off trees, but, to them, chimneys are like those tree hollows. And because of the number of chimneys in North America today, there are more swifts than ever in their life history. Swifts spend all day, every day, zipping across the sky after flying insects, their only food.
Barn swallows and cliff swallows plaster mud pellet cradles on support beams in barns and under bridges, and on the sides of buildings. They originally nested in the mouths of caves and on cliffs respectively. But like swifts, they are more abundant today than ever before because of the many human-made structures they nest on. And like swifts, they catch flying insects all day, but in farmland.
Nearly impossible to see from the ground, the pretty nests of eastern wood pewees are tied by spider webbing to the upper sides of thin, horizontal tree limbs in woodlands. Pewee nurseries are made of twigs, rootlets, plant fibers, lichens and spider webs. Male pewees sing lovely "pee-a-wee, pee-oooo" songs off and on all day. But their whistled phrases are particularly heart-rending at dusk and into the gathering darkness.
Most of these birds' nests are hard to spot, but it's neat to know they are out there with lots of beauties. Bird nurseries should always be left alone, but some of those cradles are visible in winter when they are not being used.
The nests of several kinds of small birds nesting in southeastern Pennsylvania, as elsewhere in North America, are beautiful and/or unusual, lending more touches of intrigue to this overly populated area. Most of the bird species that make those lovely cradles are camouflaged and eat invertebrates during the warmer months when those little creatures are available. And all bird species create their lovely cradles by instinct. They are born with the knowledge of nest building.
Female Baltimore orioles are famous for their unique and beautiful pouches swinging from the twiggy tips of tree branches that hang over meadows, water, roads and other open habitats. Each oriole weaves rootlets, twigs and grasses through each other and over the supporting twigs to attach their three-inch-deep creations to them.
The lovely nurseries of American goldfinches are mostly made of thistle seed down. In fact, female goldfinches generally don't build nests until July when thistle plants develop seeds, each one with a fluffy parachute that carries it away on the wind.
The soft, beautiful goldfinch cradles are composed of thistle down and fine grasses, and held together and attached to twigs on a young tree by spider webs. Goldfinches mostly eat thistle seeds and other seeds as they become available.
The only blue-gray gnatcatcher nests I have ever seen are those blown to the ground by strong wind. Gnatcatchers are tiny birds of wooded bottomlands. Females make their pretty, little cradles of plant down, fine grass and bits of lichens and bind them together, and to twigs, with spider webbing. The lichens on the outside walls help camouflage those nests.
The tiny, lovely nurseries of ruby-throated hummingbirds are nearly impossible to see perched on top of thin limbs. But if spotted, each one looks like a little fairy bed on a small branch. Only an inch and a half across, ruby-throats' soft cradles are made of plant fibers and lichens and, again, bound together and to the branch by spider webs. Hummingbirds ingest nectar and tiny insects.
Chipping sparrows make pretty, little nurseries of fine grasses, lined with hair, where available. Most chippers build their nests in planted, young arborvitae trees that have flattened, closely packed needles that create great shelter against predators and the weather.
The pretty, little cradles of red-eyed vireos and Acadian flycatchers, as examples of their respective families, are made of grass, rootlets and plant fibers and suspended below thin, forked twigs at the ends of limbs. They are held in shape and attached to supporting twigs by, you guessed it, spider webbing. Spiders, obviously, are important to many kinds of small birds that build little nurseries to hatch their young in.
Chimney swifts build platforms of small twigs on the inside walls of chimneys in towns and cities. They use their saliva as a strong glue to bind the twigs to each other and to a wall.
Swifts originally nested down the inside of hollow, broken-off trees, but, to them, chimneys are like those tree hollows. And because of the number of chimneys in North America today, there are more swifts than ever in their life history. Swifts spend all day, every day, zipping across the sky after flying insects, their only food.
Barn swallows and cliff swallows plaster mud pellet cradles on support beams in barns and under bridges, and on the sides of buildings. They originally nested in the mouths of caves and on cliffs respectively. But like swifts, they are more abundant today than ever before because of the many human-made structures they nest on. And like swifts, they catch flying insects all day, but in farmland.
Nearly impossible to see from the ground, the pretty nests of eastern wood pewees are tied by spider webbing to the upper sides of thin, horizontal tree limbs in woodlands. Pewee nurseries are made of twigs, rootlets, plant fibers, lichens and spider webs. Male pewees sing lovely "pee-a-wee, pee-oooo" songs off and on all day. But their whistled phrases are particularly heart-rending at dusk and into the gathering darkness.
Most of these birds' nests are hard to spot, but it's neat to know they are out there with lots of beauties. Bird nurseries should always be left alone, but some of those cradles are visible in winter when they are not being used.
Saturday, June 11, 2016
Nesting in Woodland Layers
By nesting at different levels in deciduous woods of the Mid-Atlantic States, a variety of small birds raise young in the same forests with reduced competition for food and nursery sites among them. Each woodland has six layers from the bottom up, the stream level, leaf-covered, bottomland floors, upland floors, shrub layers, young tree layer and the canopy. And each level has a few kinds of birds nesting and foraging for invertebrates in it. Some species use more than one level, allowing them to overlap other species. And most of these birds blend into their niche or niches, helping protect them from predators.
Louisiana waterthrushes, which is a kind of warbler, and Acadian flycatchers nest at the stream level in woods, the former species in crevices in the stream banks themselves, often behind tree roots, and the latter kind in a hanging cup on tree twigs brushing low to waterways. Both species eat invertebrates, the waterthrushes from under stones in shallow water and stream edges, and the flycatchers from the air.
Veeries, which are a type of thrush, and worm-eating warblers rear offspring on dead-leaf, bottomland forest floors near small waterways in the woods. Worm-eaters specialize in nesting on woodland slopes just above the waterways.
On upland forest floors, ovenbirds, which are a species of warbler, and whip-poor-wills, a type of nightjar, hatch youngsters in the leaf litter. Ovenbirds build a leafy dome over their nurseries and create an entrance in the side of each one. Whip-poor-wills, which are so-named because of their loud, repetitive night calls, lay two eggs per clutch on top of the leafy carpet. Ovenbirds consume invertebrates from the woodland floors by day and whip-poor-wills catch flying insects at night.
Female wood thrushes and rose-breasted grosbeaks build nests in the shrub and sapling tree layers. The thrushes get much of their food from the forest floor as their relatives, the robins, do from grassy lawns. The grosbeaks feed mostly in the shrub layer. Male rose-breasts are black on top and white below, with red on their chests, hence their species name. Male wood thrushes sing lovely, flute-like songs while the grosbeaks have robin-like songs that are more melodious than the robins'.
Three species of common birds, scarlet tanagers, red-eyed vireos and eastern wood pewees, which are a kind of flycatcher, feed and nest in or near forest canopies, or treetops, though they are hard to see among the foliage so high and against the bright sky. A key to identifying them in the canopy is to know and hear their distinctive songs.
Tanagers mostly nest 50 feet or more high in the canopies of oak trees in the forests. Females make flimsy cradles of twigs, bark strips, rootlets and grass on forks of twigs. Female tanagers are green, which allows them to blend into their treetop habitats, but their mates are red with black wings and tails. Tanagers eat sluggish insects from canopies, and forest floors at times.
Female red-eyed vireos build cups of bark strips, twigs, wasp nest paper and suspend them below forks of twigs with spider webbing about ten to fifteen feet above the ground. Vireos ingest insects from treetop foliage and that's where the males sing their short, but unending series of phrases most all day every summer day. For this they are called preacher birds.
Female eastern wood pewees create pretty nests on top of small, horizontal limbs of forest trees, nurseries that are hard to see from below. Each cradle is an open cup of bark strips, grasses and lichens attached to the branch by spider webbing about fifteen to sixty feet above the ground. Pewees catch flying insects at all levels in the woods and males sing a beautiful, whistled "pee-a wee, pee-oooo", which is particularly heart-rending at dusk.
Watch and listen for these birds in summer woodlands in the Middle Atlantic States. Many species nest there because each kind uses a different niche in various forest layers with limited interference of other types of birds.
Louisiana waterthrushes, which is a kind of warbler, and Acadian flycatchers nest at the stream level in woods, the former species in crevices in the stream banks themselves, often behind tree roots, and the latter kind in a hanging cup on tree twigs brushing low to waterways. Both species eat invertebrates, the waterthrushes from under stones in shallow water and stream edges, and the flycatchers from the air.
Veeries, which are a type of thrush, and worm-eating warblers rear offspring on dead-leaf, bottomland forest floors near small waterways in the woods. Worm-eaters specialize in nesting on woodland slopes just above the waterways.
On upland forest floors, ovenbirds, which are a species of warbler, and whip-poor-wills, a type of nightjar, hatch youngsters in the leaf litter. Ovenbirds build a leafy dome over their nurseries and create an entrance in the side of each one. Whip-poor-wills, which are so-named because of their loud, repetitive night calls, lay two eggs per clutch on top of the leafy carpet. Ovenbirds consume invertebrates from the woodland floors by day and whip-poor-wills catch flying insects at night.
Female wood thrushes and rose-breasted grosbeaks build nests in the shrub and sapling tree layers. The thrushes get much of their food from the forest floor as their relatives, the robins, do from grassy lawns. The grosbeaks feed mostly in the shrub layer. Male rose-breasts are black on top and white below, with red on their chests, hence their species name. Male wood thrushes sing lovely, flute-like songs while the grosbeaks have robin-like songs that are more melodious than the robins'.
Three species of common birds, scarlet tanagers, red-eyed vireos and eastern wood pewees, which are a kind of flycatcher, feed and nest in or near forest canopies, or treetops, though they are hard to see among the foliage so high and against the bright sky. A key to identifying them in the canopy is to know and hear their distinctive songs.
Tanagers mostly nest 50 feet or more high in the canopies of oak trees in the forests. Females make flimsy cradles of twigs, bark strips, rootlets and grass on forks of twigs. Female tanagers are green, which allows them to blend into their treetop habitats, but their mates are red with black wings and tails. Tanagers eat sluggish insects from canopies, and forest floors at times.
Female red-eyed vireos build cups of bark strips, twigs, wasp nest paper and suspend them below forks of twigs with spider webbing about ten to fifteen feet above the ground. Vireos ingest insects from treetop foliage and that's where the males sing their short, but unending series of phrases most all day every summer day. For this they are called preacher birds.
Female eastern wood pewees create pretty nests on top of small, horizontal limbs of forest trees, nurseries that are hard to see from below. Each cradle is an open cup of bark strips, grasses and lichens attached to the branch by spider webbing about fifteen to sixty feet above the ground. Pewees catch flying insects at all levels in the woods and males sing a beautiful, whistled "pee-a wee, pee-oooo", which is particularly heart-rending at dusk.
Watch and listen for these birds in summer woodlands in the Middle Atlantic States. Many species nest there because each kind uses a different niche in various forest layers with limited interference of other types of birds.
Wednesday, June 8, 2016
Differing Nesting Strategies
Last evening I saw a flurry of wing flapping on the next-door neighbors' garage roof. Looking closely, I saw the fluttering was caused by a parent mourning dove feeding its two recently-fledged young. I remembered seeing a pair of young doves early last month and that reminded me that a pair of mourning doves, like most of their clan, produce two young a month, on average. And because they start nesting here in the Middle Atlantic States in March and continue into September, a pair of mourning doves can produce six broods for a total of twelve offspring a year. But not all chicks reach maturity because of eggs falling through flimsy nests in trees, crows, raccoons, opossums and other kinds of predators eating eggs and young, and Cooper's hawk preying on adults. Still, mourning doves are abundant in North America. And so are Canada geese in the Lower 48 of the United States, even though both species are game birds, hunted by humans in autumn.
Canada geese traditionally nest in Canada, but populations of them are common across much of the Lower 48 because of stocking for hunting. Mourning doves and Canada geese are abundant game birds in the farmland of the Mid-Atlantic States where they eat grain and green shoots respectively. Both species are major parts of that human-made habitat the year around.
But the most interesting part of the life histories of these game birds is the reproductive strategies they evolved over millions of years, both of which are different from each other but, obviously, successful. Each female mourning dove lays two eggs each month, for six months, alternately in two tree nests while each female Canada goose lays one clutch of four to six eggs each year in a grassy cradle on the ground. And both parents of the two species care for their young until they are old enough to take care of themselves. Each pair of geese, by the way, get away with only a small number of goslings a year because goose parents are large and fiercely protect their progeny. The goslings, therefore, have a low mortality rate, even though they live on the ground and on bodies of water.
Young doves are born helpless and need to be fed a combination of regurgitated throat phlem and predigested seeds until they fledge their nurseries, and a short time after fledging. Young geese, however, hatch covered with fuzz, with their eyes open, and ready to feed themselves on a variety of aquatic and land vegetation within 24 hours of hatching.
The goose way of raising young is straight-forward; one clutch per year. All the goslings hatch on the same day and all grow at the same rate until independent by late summer. But the doves' way of rearing offspring is more complicated.
Mourning doves in the Middle Atlantic States start to raise chicks in March. Then the female of each pair lays two eggs in a sloppy nursery she built on a tree limb, or in another bird's cradle. When those first two chicks are half-grown, their mother lays two eggs in another nest and the parents take turns incubating the eggs and small young. The parent not incubating ingests grain and seeds and feeds the offspring. About the time the first young leave their nursery, the second pair of babies hatches and is brooded and fed by each parent in turn. And when the second brood is half-grown, their mother lays a third clutch of eggs in the first, now empty, nest. And so it goes all summer into September, resulting in about six broods a year.
Mourning doves and Canada geese have different ways of rearing young, but each way is successful, as are all the various ways that successful animals raise offspring. Nature is forever experimenting with different ways of surviving in the seemingly unending variety of niches on Earth. That is one of the many reasons why nature is always beautiful and intriguing to experience everywhere and at all times.
Canada geese traditionally nest in Canada, but populations of them are common across much of the Lower 48 because of stocking for hunting. Mourning doves and Canada geese are abundant game birds in the farmland of the Mid-Atlantic States where they eat grain and green shoots respectively. Both species are major parts of that human-made habitat the year around.
But the most interesting part of the life histories of these game birds is the reproductive strategies they evolved over millions of years, both of which are different from each other but, obviously, successful. Each female mourning dove lays two eggs each month, for six months, alternately in two tree nests while each female Canada goose lays one clutch of four to six eggs each year in a grassy cradle on the ground. And both parents of the two species care for their young until they are old enough to take care of themselves. Each pair of geese, by the way, get away with only a small number of goslings a year because goose parents are large and fiercely protect their progeny. The goslings, therefore, have a low mortality rate, even though they live on the ground and on bodies of water.
Young doves are born helpless and need to be fed a combination of regurgitated throat phlem and predigested seeds until they fledge their nurseries, and a short time after fledging. Young geese, however, hatch covered with fuzz, with their eyes open, and ready to feed themselves on a variety of aquatic and land vegetation within 24 hours of hatching.
The goose way of raising young is straight-forward; one clutch per year. All the goslings hatch on the same day and all grow at the same rate until independent by late summer. But the doves' way of rearing offspring is more complicated.
Mourning doves in the Middle Atlantic States start to raise chicks in March. Then the female of each pair lays two eggs in a sloppy nursery she built on a tree limb, or in another bird's cradle. When those first two chicks are half-grown, their mother lays two eggs in another nest and the parents take turns incubating the eggs and small young. The parent not incubating ingests grain and seeds and feeds the offspring. About the time the first young leave their nursery, the second pair of babies hatches and is brooded and fed by each parent in turn. And when the second brood is half-grown, their mother lays a third clutch of eggs in the first, now empty, nest. And so it goes all summer into September, resulting in about six broods a year.
Mourning doves and Canada geese have different ways of rearing young, but each way is successful, as are all the various ways that successful animals raise offspring. Nature is forever experimenting with different ways of surviving in the seemingly unending variety of niches on Earth. That is one of the many reasons why nature is always beautiful and intriguing to experience everywhere and at all times.
Sunday, June 5, 2016
Wildlife in Sparse Shelter
I like to watch places of limited food and sparse shelter for wildlife to see how adaptable life is and what it can adjust to. Even seemingly barren human-made habitats are used by adaptable creatures. In April and May of 2016, I occasionally studied a thin, intermittent hedgerow of trees, shrubbery and tall grasses and perennial plants between fields in cropland a mile north of New Holland, Pennsylvania. That hedgerow also has a ditch that fills with water during a heavy or prolonged rain. Though offering sparse food and shelter to wildlife, a surprising number of bird and mammal species live there. These adaptable animals have a future because of their flourishing and raising young in less than ideal niches imposed by the works of people.
Three species of small, cavity-nesting birds, including a pair of eastern bluebirds, a pair of Carolina chickadees and two pairs of tree swallows, and a pair of American kestrels, a pair of screech owls and a few gray squirrels live in that slender, quarter-mile-long hedgerow between fields because of cavities in large silver maple, black walnut and weeping willow trees and three bluebird nesting boxes. The small birds hatch young in the bird houses and smaller hollows in the trees, while the kestrels, owls and squirrels rear offspring in the larger tree cavities.
Bluebirds catch insects by perching on tree twigs and fences and dropping to vegetation below. Chickadees pick up tiny invertebrates from the bark, twigs and leaves of trees, while tree swallows snare and eat flying insects in mid-air. Those different ways of getting food allow these species to live together without rivalry with each other.
The kestrel and owl families are counterparts of each other when searching for field mice and other prey among the shrubbery and across neighboring fields. The kestrels hunt by day and the owls do so at night, which reduces direct competition for the same prey animals.
I saw several American robins, a few mourning doves, a pair of blue jays, a pair of summering eastern kingbirds, a red-tailed hawk, a Cooper's hawk and a sharp-shinned hawk perched on tree limbs in that hedgerow this spring, but not all at once. The hawks were watching for prey animals to catch.
Any and all of those bird species could nest on twigs or limbs in that slim row of trees. The robins and kingbirds already do.
I also saw a variety of birds that nest in the bushes, vines and sapling trees in that hedgerow. Those thicket birds include permanent resident song sparrows, northern mockingbirds, northern cardinals, house finches, American goldfinches and summering gray catbirds. I most often hear those birds in the dense jungles of growth before I see them.
Thickets of shrubs and vines, though some of them are limited in size, provide great shelter for wildlife of many kinds, including mammals. I have seen wood chucks, striped skunks, opossums, cottontail rabbits, little brown bats and big brown bats in the hedgerow I studied. Bushes and vines give the land mammals cover and the ditch often provides them with water. Presumably the bats perch in the trees for the day in summer.
Wood chucks are home builders. They dig burrows in the soil with a few entrances so they are not trapped in their own homes. But when chucks abandon their tunnels, other mammals, including red foxes, skunks, possums and rabbits, move into some of them.
The hedgerow I studied close to home this spring was interesting. It demonstrated how adaptable some critters are. Those animals increase their populations because of their adjustments to less than ideal conditions, and we get to experience interesting wildlife close to home. Readers can look for such habitats close to home to have similar experiences.
Three species of small, cavity-nesting birds, including a pair of eastern bluebirds, a pair of Carolina chickadees and two pairs of tree swallows, and a pair of American kestrels, a pair of screech owls and a few gray squirrels live in that slender, quarter-mile-long hedgerow between fields because of cavities in large silver maple, black walnut and weeping willow trees and three bluebird nesting boxes. The small birds hatch young in the bird houses and smaller hollows in the trees, while the kestrels, owls and squirrels rear offspring in the larger tree cavities.
Bluebirds catch insects by perching on tree twigs and fences and dropping to vegetation below. Chickadees pick up tiny invertebrates from the bark, twigs and leaves of trees, while tree swallows snare and eat flying insects in mid-air. Those different ways of getting food allow these species to live together without rivalry with each other.
The kestrel and owl families are counterparts of each other when searching for field mice and other prey among the shrubbery and across neighboring fields. The kestrels hunt by day and the owls do so at night, which reduces direct competition for the same prey animals.
I saw several American robins, a few mourning doves, a pair of blue jays, a pair of summering eastern kingbirds, a red-tailed hawk, a Cooper's hawk and a sharp-shinned hawk perched on tree limbs in that hedgerow this spring, but not all at once. The hawks were watching for prey animals to catch.
Any and all of those bird species could nest on twigs or limbs in that slim row of trees. The robins and kingbirds already do.
I also saw a variety of birds that nest in the bushes, vines and sapling trees in that hedgerow. Those thicket birds include permanent resident song sparrows, northern mockingbirds, northern cardinals, house finches, American goldfinches and summering gray catbirds. I most often hear those birds in the dense jungles of growth before I see them.
Thickets of shrubs and vines, though some of them are limited in size, provide great shelter for wildlife of many kinds, including mammals. I have seen wood chucks, striped skunks, opossums, cottontail rabbits, little brown bats and big brown bats in the hedgerow I studied. Bushes and vines give the land mammals cover and the ditch often provides them with water. Presumably the bats perch in the trees for the day in summer.
Wood chucks are home builders. They dig burrows in the soil with a few entrances so they are not trapped in their own homes. But when chucks abandon their tunnels, other mammals, including red foxes, skunks, possums and rabbits, move into some of them.
The hedgerow I studied close to home this spring was interesting. It demonstrated how adaptable some critters are. Those animals increase their populations because of their adjustments to less than ideal conditions, and we get to experience interesting wildlife close to home. Readers can look for such habitats close to home to have similar experiences.
Saturday, June 4, 2016
Boggy Pastures in Summer
One day late in May of 2016, I visited three boggy, short-grass cow pastures located within a few miles of each other in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. I wanted to experience the beauties and intrigues of what nature was in them, though at first glance they appeared barren of wildlife because of short grass, few trees and even fewer, or no, strips of shrubbery. But those meadows have mixed patches of cattails and skunk cabbage, plus clumps of sedges and rushes, all in low spots in the meadows. And each one of those pastures has a stream flowing through it and millions of buttercup flowers. I was impressed with their green and yellow beauties.
Cattails and skunk cabbage growing together is interesting in itself. Although they both grow only in constantly moist soil, cattails need full sunlight while skunk cabbage tolerates shade. Skunk cabbage was in those soggy bottomlands first, when they were shaded by deciduous forests. But when trees were cut away to clear the land for farming and meadows, skunk cabbage established in the damp ground adapted to the full sunlight and thrived. Meanwhile cattail seeds blew in on the wind and developed the five foot tall cattail plants, each with a decorative, brown sausage-like seed head on top of each stalk, that colonized the moist soil among the skunk cabbage plants.
Red-winged blackbirds are adapted to nesting among patches of cattails. Red-wings dominate stands of cattails with their numbers, activities and beauties. Males are striking in black feathering and scarlet shoulder patches. They stand on cattail stems, fences and roadside wires to sing "o-ka-lee" several times each day. And they chase away hawks, crows and other would-be predators.
Female red-wings are dark-brown, streaked with beige, which camouflages and protects them from predators. Each female builds a nursery of grasses among a few stalks of cattails a couple of feet above the ground or water level of a wetland, including in boggy pastures.
Grassy pastures were created along waterways to provide food and water for cattle, horses and other farm animals. When I visited those three meadows toward the end of May, the stream in each one was partly choked with water cress, a plant originally from Europe. I saw at least one brood of mallard ducklings and their mom in each waterway and muskrat droppings on rocks in the waterways and on the muddy shorelines. Depositing droppings in strategic places is how muskrats mark their territories.
I saw a killdeer plover, which is a kind of inland shorebird, along the edge of one stream. Probably its mate was setting on a clutch of four eggs somewhere nearby in the pasture. A pair of spotted sandpipers, another kind of inland shorebird, should have been along each waterway in the cow pastures, but I didn't see any while I was at each one. But with the grass and other vegetation, these small, camouflaged birds are hard to see at best, which is good for them. Both these kinds of shorebirds feed on invertebrates they find in water, mud and short vegetation.
Several barn swallows and a few tree swallows dashed over each set of meadows and waterways in their pursuit of flying insects to eat. And there are purple martins, another kind of swallow, at one meadow because of a nearby, farmyard colony of them. These three species of swallows, and others, are always entertaining when in flight.
Barn swallows build mud pellet nests on support beams in barns while martins hatch young in high apartment bird houses on farmyard lawns. Tree swallows rear offspring in tree cavities and bird boxes erected for them. With few trees in cropland, tree swallows almost wholly depend on bird boxes to raise chicks in.
A pair of eastern kingbirds was at each of the three pastures I visited. They perch on tree twigs and fences to watch for passing flying insects. When a victim comes near, each kingbird zips out from its perch, grabs the bug in its beak and flies back to its perch to eat its prey. Each pair of kingbirds builds a nursery in a fork of twigs in a lone tree in a meadow.
There were a few other kinds of critters at each of these three meadows. Green darners, which are a kind of dragonfly, zoomed over all three sets of waterways and pastures after flying insects to eat, and mates. Those big dragonflies are entertaining to watch and are not harmful to people. In fact, they eat a lot of mosquitoes and other pesky insects.
I heard several male green frogs croaking and belching from one shallow, sluggish stream in one pasture. Their guttural vocalizations, as with all types of frogs and toads, are unchanged since the long ago age of amphibians. They are a blast from the distant past when amphibians dominated. And like all other frogs and toads, green frogs consume a variety of invertebrates.
And I saw a belted kingfisher and a couple of snapping turtles in the largest stream in one of the three meadows. The kingfisher dived from the air into the stream to catch a minnow. And I could see the snappers moving about with only the tops of their shells and their noses and eyes visible above the water line. They were looking for fish, ducklings and anything else to eat.
Those plants and animals I mentioned will continue living along those streams in cow pastures through most of the summer. They may not always be noticeable at first, but with time and perseverance, some of them should be spotted by anyone who looks for them. And so it is in habitats near readers' homes.
Cattails and skunk cabbage growing together is interesting in itself. Although they both grow only in constantly moist soil, cattails need full sunlight while skunk cabbage tolerates shade. Skunk cabbage was in those soggy bottomlands first, when they were shaded by deciduous forests. But when trees were cut away to clear the land for farming and meadows, skunk cabbage established in the damp ground adapted to the full sunlight and thrived. Meanwhile cattail seeds blew in on the wind and developed the five foot tall cattail plants, each with a decorative, brown sausage-like seed head on top of each stalk, that colonized the moist soil among the skunk cabbage plants.
Red-winged blackbirds are adapted to nesting among patches of cattails. Red-wings dominate stands of cattails with their numbers, activities and beauties. Males are striking in black feathering and scarlet shoulder patches. They stand on cattail stems, fences and roadside wires to sing "o-ka-lee" several times each day. And they chase away hawks, crows and other would-be predators.
Female red-wings are dark-brown, streaked with beige, which camouflages and protects them from predators. Each female builds a nursery of grasses among a few stalks of cattails a couple of feet above the ground or water level of a wetland, including in boggy pastures.
Grassy pastures were created along waterways to provide food and water for cattle, horses and other farm animals. When I visited those three meadows toward the end of May, the stream in each one was partly choked with water cress, a plant originally from Europe. I saw at least one brood of mallard ducklings and their mom in each waterway and muskrat droppings on rocks in the waterways and on the muddy shorelines. Depositing droppings in strategic places is how muskrats mark their territories.
I saw a killdeer plover, which is a kind of inland shorebird, along the edge of one stream. Probably its mate was setting on a clutch of four eggs somewhere nearby in the pasture. A pair of spotted sandpipers, another kind of inland shorebird, should have been along each waterway in the cow pastures, but I didn't see any while I was at each one. But with the grass and other vegetation, these small, camouflaged birds are hard to see at best, which is good for them. Both these kinds of shorebirds feed on invertebrates they find in water, mud and short vegetation.
Several barn swallows and a few tree swallows dashed over each set of meadows and waterways in their pursuit of flying insects to eat. And there are purple martins, another kind of swallow, at one meadow because of a nearby, farmyard colony of them. These three species of swallows, and others, are always entertaining when in flight.
Barn swallows build mud pellet nests on support beams in barns while martins hatch young in high apartment bird houses on farmyard lawns. Tree swallows rear offspring in tree cavities and bird boxes erected for them. With few trees in cropland, tree swallows almost wholly depend on bird boxes to raise chicks in.
A pair of eastern kingbirds was at each of the three pastures I visited. They perch on tree twigs and fences to watch for passing flying insects. When a victim comes near, each kingbird zips out from its perch, grabs the bug in its beak and flies back to its perch to eat its prey. Each pair of kingbirds builds a nursery in a fork of twigs in a lone tree in a meadow.
There were a few other kinds of critters at each of these three meadows. Green darners, which are a kind of dragonfly, zoomed over all three sets of waterways and pastures after flying insects to eat, and mates. Those big dragonflies are entertaining to watch and are not harmful to people. In fact, they eat a lot of mosquitoes and other pesky insects.
I heard several male green frogs croaking and belching from one shallow, sluggish stream in one pasture. Their guttural vocalizations, as with all types of frogs and toads, are unchanged since the long ago age of amphibians. They are a blast from the distant past when amphibians dominated. And like all other frogs and toads, green frogs consume a variety of invertebrates.
And I saw a belted kingfisher and a couple of snapping turtles in the largest stream in one of the three meadows. The kingfisher dived from the air into the stream to catch a minnow. And I could see the snappers moving about with only the tops of their shells and their noses and eyes visible above the water line. They were looking for fish, ducklings and anything else to eat.
Those plants and animals I mentioned will continue living along those streams in cow pastures through most of the summer. They may not always be noticeable at first, but with time and perseverance, some of them should be spotted by anyone who looks for them. And so it is in habitats near readers' homes.
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