Mid-Summer Roadside Blooms

     In mid-summer over the years, I've seen many kinds of blooming roadside plants in southeastern Pennsylvania farmland.  Together the beautiful flowers of those plants create the prettiest bouquets  anyone could hope to see, free.  Most roadside vegetation is originally from Europe where it long ago adapted to cultivated ground.  Of all those plants on the shoulders of country byways, and I've counted at least 24 kinds early in July in Lancaster County alone, only common milkweeds and dogbanes are native to North America.  All other species were brought to America by European colonists, either accidentally or purposefully.  Today those plants, alien and natives alike, brighten rural roadsides with their lovely blooms, where they aren't mowed off, making a walk or ride in croplands more interesting and enjoyable.
     Delightfully, chicory with its sky-blue blooms and red clover that has hot-pink blossoms dominate many roadside bouquets.  And these two species, along with Queen-Anne's-lace and evening lynchis with white flowers are patriotic- red white and blue.
     Some of the alien plants have a bit of European history.  Chicory roots can be roasted, crushed and used for coffee supplement or substitute.  Queen-Anne's-lace is the ancestor of domestic carrots.  The two plants look similar, smell the same and have almost identical flowers.  The dead, dried stalks of common mullein, that produces yellow blooms, but later are amply dotted with empty seed pockets, were dipped in animal fat and lit to be used as torches at night in Europe.  The stiff spines of teasel seed heads that protected tiny, lavender blossoms, were used in Europe to tease out wool.  And the leaves of bouncing bet, that has pale-pink flowers, were used to make soap lather.
     None of these species grow everywhere along country lanes.  Each community of roadside plants is unique and all vegetation in each patch competes with its vegetative fellows for space, water and sunlight.     
     Some roadside plant communities are thin because some farmers cultivate right to the roads.  These roadsides have few kinds of plants which usually get mowed anyway.
     Unfortunately for these plants, insects and other creatures, and us, many roadsides get mowed close to the ground, eliminating their beautiful flowers we could have enjoyed.  And that mowing deprives invertebrates, field mice and certain birds of food.  But, fortunately, mowing only cuts off the plants, but doesn't kill them.  The plants grow back and many produce blossoms on short stems close to the ground, benefiting themselves, wildlife and people who enjoy the flowers. 
     Some mowing of roadside vegetation is interrupted by poles, signs, rocks, the steepness of the banks, ditches and other things.  There the plants can grow, mature and produce flowers and seeds.
    Canada thistles, nodding thistles, common milkweeds and red clover, all of which have pink blossoms, yellow sweet clover with yellow flowers and white sweet clover with white blooms are particularly noted for attracting pollinating insects to their blossoms.  Their flowers are often swarming with a variety of bees, small butterflies and other types of insects that sip sugary nectar, pollinating those blooms in the process.  Cabbage white, sulphur, skipper and other kinds of butterflies visit the blooms to get nectar.  Monarch butterfly females lay eggs on milkweed plants, the only food of their caterpillars.  And dogbane beetles live on and eat dogbane plants.
     Japanese honeysuckle with white and beige flowers and bind weeds with white blooms are vines that attach to plants, poles and other objects, or sprawl across the ground. The blossoms of those plants add beauty to the edges of many rural roads.
     Some other plant species along country byways are daisy fleabanes and moth mulleins with white flowers, viper's bugloss with blue ones and buttercups, corydalis and butter and eggs that have yellow blooms.  Buttercups were everywhere abundant in May, but now only some persist.  Butter and eggs are wild snap dragons and have flowers like those on domestic snap dragons in gardens.
     When walking or riding along rural roadsides in the heart of summer in the Mid-Atlantic States, and elsewhere, look for these lovely flowers, most of which came from Europe.  And watch for the many kinds of invertebrates that get food from that road edge vegetation.  Though only a few feet deep, roadside shoulders are miles and miles long, harboring plants and animals in abundance.   

Some Favorite Moths

     A couple of times over the years in the eastern United States, while pumping gas into my car, I noticed a dead luna moth on the blacktop by the pump.  Those moths were attracted to and fluttered around large night lights until they ran out of energy and died.  And a few times here in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, over the years, I saw a luna moth fluttering in the gathering darkness of deciduous woods, looking like a tiny, floating ghost.
     Some of my favorite moths are I O moths, so-named for markings on their hind wings, lunas and rosy maples.  They all have traits in common, including being attracted to outdoor lights, having furry bodies, being brightly colored, not feeding as adult moths, dying soon after egg-laying and being active only at night.  Males of each species have large, feathery antennae to readily sense pheromones released by females to bring the genders together for mating.  And all these pretty and interesting moths live in the eastern half of the United States and survive the winter as pupae.
     I think moths, like butterflies and many other species of insects, go through a four-stage metamorphosis, from egg to larvae, pupa and adult, so they can travel distances to find mates.  Caterpillars do fine feeding and growing, but when it comes time to reproduce, they can't travel far at all.  But with wings they develop in the pupa stage, they can fly long distances to find mates to reproduce themselves. 
    I O moths are my very favorite moth species.  Each moth has a three inch wing span.  Males have yellow bodies and fore wings while females have reddish-brown bodies and front wings.  Both genders of this species are plain when their wings are closed.  But when they suddenly open their wings in alarm, a would-be predator is startled by what looks like the face of an owl.  Each hind wing has a large, dark spot that resembles an eye.  In fact, the I O name came from a black, curved line halfway around each "eye", the I, and the round dark spot, the O.  There also is a white spot in each black circle that resembles light reflected in the "eye".
     There is one brood of I O larvae a year in the north.  Each female protrudes a scent gland from her rear to emit pheromones into the air.  Males use their antennae to find the females and mate with them.  Each female lays a couple hundred eggs on the caterpillars' plant foods, around 20 in each cluster.  I O larvae eat the leaves of cherry, red maple, sweet gum, red bud and other kinds of trees, and the foliage of sweet clovers, white clover, roses and other types of vegetation.
     I O caterpillars are gregarious and feed in clusters for their protection.  They are light orange when small, but become green with two lateral stripes on each side, a red one above a white one.  These larvae also grow many clusters of green spines that release painful venom when touched.
     I O larvae spin flimsy cocoons of dark silk in leaf litter or wrapped in living leaves in trees.  Those leaves eventually die and fall to the leaf litter below, still containing the leaf-brown cocoons.  Their the pupae overwinter.
     Luna moths have four to five inch wing spans and are lime-green.  This species has long, tapering back wings that are graceful.  And each moth has a small eye spot on each of its four wings.  Each female lays 400 to 600 eggs, four to seven at a time, under the leaves of host trees in woodlands, including birches, alders, hickories, walnuts, sumacs and other kinds of trees.  The green larvae, that also have bristles, are gregarious at first, but later live and feed alone.  Each caterpillar spins a thin cocoon in leaf litter and is a red-brown pupa in it over winter.
     Rosy maple moths have two inch wing spans, pale-yellow bodies, pink legs and pink and yellow wings with no eye spots.  Their green larvae have lengthwise, white stripes and short, black spines.  These caterpillars eat the leaves of red and silver maples, hence their name.  Again, these larvae are gregarious at first, but later feed alone.               
     These moths, and other species, are beautiful and interesting here in the United States.  But they are not seen much because of their nocturnal habits and not living more than a week or a little more.  Look for them at night around night lights, or by day resting on a tree trunk or some other object.
    

Campus Wildlife in Summer

     One day late in June of this year, I drove into the large parking lot of a church in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania on business and noticed about six killdeer plovers running and flying across the blacktop ahead of me.  The church campus was composed mostly of that parking lot and even larger short-grass lawn, studded here and there with planted, young trees, good killdeer habitat, surrounded by fields and hedgerows.  Still, I thought, that's a lot of killdeer in one place in this area at this time of year.  Then I saw the probable answer; several raised, decorative islands of rocks in that parking lot, each island a little bigger than the size of a pickup truck.
     Killdeer are adapted to hatching young on rocky ground where they and their eggs are camouflaged.  And they adapted to catching invertebrates on soil with little or short vegetation.  That human-made church campus is a good habitat for killdeer.
     As I continued driving on that parking lot, I noticed other human-made habitats recently carved from farmland.  There are two, quarter-acre retention basins filled with water and rimmed by tall cattails.  About six pairs of red-winged blackbirds are nesting among the cattails of each basin.  Each female red-wing attaches her grass nursery to a few cattails stems a couple feet above the water level. Red-wing parents, however, get much invertebrate food from the surrounding short-grass lawn and shuttle it to their young in hidden cradles among the cattails.
     The rim of one of the cattail basins is lined with a variety of flowering plants, including Canada thistles, common milkweeds, chicory and daisy fleabane.  The day I was there I saw an attractive pair of American goldfinches feeding on the seeds of the thistle plants that were already done blooming and developed seeds.  And I saw worker bumble bees and one each of red admiral and question mark butterflies sipping nectar from thistle and milkweed blossoms.  Soon, I suspect, female monarch butterflies will visit those milkweeds to lay eggs on their leaves, which is the only food of monarch caterpillars.           
     The other cattail basin had few flowers on its edge, but was loaded with green frogs, though it was recently built.  Green frogs often travel overland on dewy nights or during rain and some discover new ponds to live in.  I knew the frogs were there because many of the males were gulping and belching to entice females to them for spawning in the shallow water.
     A stream, bordered by a thin strip of tall grass and other plants and dotted with young trees, flows slowly through one end of this campus.  A dam on the stream slows its current for over a hundred yards, making it more like a pond.  While there, I saw a family of mallard ducks on the water and a few families of Canada geese grazing on short grass on the lawn near the waterway.   A great blue heron and a green-backed heron stalked frogs and fish in the shallows of the waterway.  I thought perhaps the green heron and its mate had young in a stick nest in a tree in a nearby hedgerow.  A pair of spotted sandpipers bobbed and danced along the stream's edge while searching for invertebrates.  Those peculiar motions are a form of camouflage, resembling bits of debris bouncing in the wavelets on the shores of inland waterways and impoundments.  Those spotties probably have a brood of young somewhere nearby.  And I saw a few carp feeding in the slowest part of the stream, stirring mud from the bottom as they moved along. 
     Green darner dragonflies, white-tailed dragonflies and bluet damselflies sped and fluttered over the water and lawns after mates and flying insect prey.  These insects are not harmful to people.  In fact, they are entertaining and eat a lot of pesky insects, including mosquitoes.
     I saw a couple pairs of rough-winged swallows, a pair of belted kingfishers and muskrat signs along the stream.  These creatures dig burrows into the soft soil of stream banks where they live and raise young.  The swallows catch flying insects, the kingfishers eat small fish and the muskrats consume a variety of vegetation along waterways, therefore there is no competition among these species for food.
     A couple pairs of permanent resident song sparrows nest in shrubbery along the stream while a pair of eastern kingbirds hatched young in a twig and grass cradle in a tree by that same waterway flowing slowly through the lawn.  The sparrows are like sandpipers in that they patrol the shallow water and mud flats along streams and ponds for a variety of invertebrates to eat.  The kingbirds, however, being flycatchers, catch insects from the air.
     A few each of barn swallows and tree swallows flew swiftly over lawns and the stream in hot pursuit of flying insects, while a giant snapping turtle lumbered across a lawn on her way to a place to dig a hole and lay eggs.  I saw the snout of another snapper in the stream at the same time.  The barn swallows nest in a nearby barn while the tree swallows rear offspring in the few bluebird boxes erected on the church campus.
     There are many other campuses like this one, but of all different acreages.  And if certain parts of each one was left alone, either on purpose or by human indifference, to develop plants naturally, they would be good places for wildlife to live and reproduce, increasing their populations.  Every plant and wild animal on this campus is there because its needs are met there.  I was fortunate and glad to have noticed the plants and animals I did on this campus, though the bulk of it is mowed and trimmed.   
         
    
     

Who's Eating What

     Sitting on our deck and looking over our back yard in New Holland, Pennsylvania one early-evening toward the end of June of this year, I noticed a few blue jays rummaging in our two large pussy willow bushes.  Looking closer, I saw they were eating Japanese beetles that were chewing on pussy willow leaves.  These local jays were all the more noticeable because I hadn't seen much of them since the end of April.  Because of their raising a brood of young, they were quiet recluses.  I even saw one jay, a youngster of the year, begging with fluttering wings and being fed a beetle by a parent.  Immediately, I looked for other species of adaptable and common creatures feeding on, in and over our typically manicured lawn of short grass, bushes, vines and trees that evening.  Though trimmed weekly, our lawn has food sources, the same as any other habitat.  And several kinds of critters take advantage of those food sources. 
     A young cottontail rabbit was nibbling grass and white clover leaves while an adult and a young American robin ran and stopped, ran and stopped over the short grass in search of earthworms and other kinds of invertebrates.  And I noticed a few each of worker honey bees and bumble bees visiting white clover flowers in our lawn.  White clover is a major, reliable source of nectar to bees and other types of insects through summer.  Regular mowing makes the clover plants produce more and still more blossoms to replace the ones cut off during each and every mowing. 
     I knew from past experiences that there are many kinds of invertebrates living in the soil and under mulch in our yard.  Earthworms get nutrition by eating the soil itself.  Slugs, a small kind of land snail, millipedes and wood lice eat decaying plant material, such as dead grass from mowing that filters down through living grass.  Centipedes and firefly larvae feed on some of those little invertebrates.
     That evening, a few kinds of birds repeatedly visited our sunflower feeder hanging in a sheltering bush, as they do off and on all day.  A pair of Carolina chickadees, a tufted titmouse and a few each of house finches and house sparrows took turns getting sunflower seeds from the feeder, creating entertainment to us, as they always do.  The house sparrows seem to be bullies in that some of them, sometimes, chase other small birds from the feeder.  Meanwhile, a young northern cardinal with its typical dark beak, and its father, a gray squirrel and a mourning dove ate bits of sunflower seeds off the ground under the feeder.  And these were just some of the animals that come to that feeder each summer day, all of which add joy to our lives.  Also, the squirrels and every bird species in our yard come to our bird baths to drink and/or bathe, adding more beauty and intrigue to our neighborhood.
     As the evening wore on, I repeatedly saw up to a half dozen chimney swifts careening swiftly across the sky after flying insects, their only food.  Each swift flaps rapidly, then soars with its wings stiff and swept-back, like a shot arrow point without its shaft.  Each swift, while soaring, banks left, then right across the sky in hot pursuit of its victims.
     Eventually the swifts retired for the evening down the inside of chimneys where they also raise young.  And soon I saw up to four or five little brown bats flickering, swooping and diving across the darkening sky after flying insects, their only food. 
     Swifts and bats consume the same kind of food, but are not in direct competition with each other because they hunt prey at different times of day.  And the bats, like swifts, are entertaining to us who watch for them.
     I had fun watching our back lawn with food-gathering critters in mind.  Readers can do the same in most any habitat you are in.     

Hedgerow Wildlife in Summer

     On June 23rd, this past, I slowly drove by a half-acre, abandoned meadow of tall grass and red clover in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, a pasture that has a multiflora rose hedgerow on one side of it and a row of black walnut and crack willow trees over a brook on the other side.  I creeped by that pasture because it looked like it would be harboring some nesting species of small birds.  Spotting a willow flycatcher perched on a dead twig near the road I was on, I quickly stopped the car.  The flycatcher was poised to zip out and catch flying insects with its beak in mid-air and go back to its roost, or another one, to eat its victim.  I used my car as a blind for an hour to watch for other kinds of birds in that little, human-made meadow.  Any species I saw at this time of year would be nesting in the protective cover there. 
     I saw more kinds of small birds in the hedgerow than I did among the trees.  In an hour's time I saw a male song sparrow singing from tree tops and the tips of shrubbery, a male house finch, a handsome pair of northern cardinals and a northern mockingbird.  All those species are permanent residents in the hedgerow.  And all are currently consuming invertebrates and feeding the same to young in their nurseries in the thickets of leaves and thorns.  In the fall and winter, however, the first three species will be eating nearby weed and grass seeds and the mockers will be ingesting berries, especially those from multiflora rose bushes.
     At least one pair each of summering willow flycatchers, gray catbirds and indigo buntings were also rearing offspring among the protective foliage and thorns of rose bushes.  I saw all three kinds in the open, including a beautifully blue male indigo singing from a tip of a walnut tree.  A male willow flycatcher was repeatedly singing an explosive, sneezing "fitz-bew" from an exposed perch among the shrubbery.  There probably was only one or two families per species, because that is all the hedgerow could support.  These species, too, fed their young on invertebrates.  These types of birds will migrate south in the late summer or fall to find food sources that will sustain them through another northern winter.
     Bird species I noted among the trees bordering the little pasture included a female American goldfinch, a male yellow-shafted flicker, a female Baltimore oriole, an eastern kingbird and a yellow warbler.  All these birds, except the goldfinches, consume invertebrates in summer.  And all of them, except the goldfinches, will go south for the winter.
     The goldfinch pair probably will nest in July, if there is a patch of thistles nearby to make their cradle from thistle fluff and feed their young pre-digested thistles seeds.  Goldfinches build their beautiful nurseries in the crotches of small trees or in shrubbery. 
     There are a few dead limbs among the living trees bordering the meadow.  The flicker pair could, or did, chip a nesting cavity into one of those dead branches to rear youngsters. 
     The female oriole flew in and out of a tall black walnut tree where she probably had a deep, woven pouch of grasses and vines filled with babies.  The hedgerow and a line of trees among fields, the stream, and the pasture make an ideal nesting environment for Baltimore orioles.
     Eastern kingbirds also nest in lone trees in fields and pastures.  And, being flycatchers, they perch on twigs and fences and flutter out after flying insects.
     Yellow warblers seem partial to hatching young among willow trees, that mostly grow along waterways.  Looking like yellow canaries, these warblers flit among the willows to catch a variety of small invertebrates.  
     There are many deserted meadows surrounded by hedgerows, streams and lines of trees in Lancaster County farmland that provide homes to a variety of wildlife, including nesting small birds.  And, as noted, it's predictable what kinds of birds will nest in such habitats.  Each species is tied to a certain niche.  Free as a bird is not true.  One has only to get out and experience what kinds of birds are raising young near your home.  And you will soon be able to predict what species will be nesting in any given habitat you experience. 

Woodlot Wildlife in Summer

     As I drove up to the southern edge of one of my favorite woodlots a mile outside New Holland, Pennsylvania in the middle of June, I saw a pair of eastern phoebes on dead twigs a few feet from the little, country bridge I was crossing and a gray catbird in inch-deep water of the stream the bridge spanned.  I stopped my car and waited quietly inside to see what other creatures would appear.  Any birds in that woodlot now would be nesters.  But June is a tough month to watch for small, woodland birds because of the foliage and the birds' secrecy around their cradles and youngsters.
     I stayed an hour on the edge of that 30-acre woodlot that first day and went back another three days in a row for an hour each trip.  While there, I noted several animals of interest for a small patch of woods.  And each species was where it belonged.
     At one time or another, I saw several kinds of permanent resident woodland birds among the trees in those bottomland woods, including a pair of Carolina chickadees, a tufted titmouse, a white-breasted nuthatch and a downy woodpecker.  I also heard a red-bellied woodpecker calling from the depths of the woods.  Once, a handsome blue jay landed in a tiny, grassy clearing on the edge of the woods where I was parked and was eating something from the grass roots level.  Another time, a male yellow-shafted flicker landed in that same opening to eat ants and other invertebrates on the ground.  All the woodpecker species would be raising young in cavities they chipped into dead wood on limbs in that woodland.  
     I saw a permanent resident male American goldfinch, a song sparrow and a pair of northern cardinals, and a pair of summering gray catbirds among the shrubbery on the edge of the woods.  Interestingly, the goldfinch, song sparrow, a catbird and a couple of purple grackles repeatedly waded in the inch-deep water to get food.  The goldfinch ate alga while the song sparrow, catbird and grackles consumed invertebrates from the water.  Those species were shore birds along that little stream in the woods.  And, no doubt, the sparrows and catbirds were nesting in nearby shrubbery, but getting some of their food from the nearby and handy waterway.    
     The pair of phoebes had a nest on a support beam under the little bridge spanning the woodland waterway and were catching flying insects to feed to their young.  Phoebes traditionally build mud and moss nurseries on rock ledges, under overhanging boulders near water in woods.  To this pair of adaptable phoebes that bridge was a rock ledge under an overhanging boulder that protected their young well.
     A few American robins, including a couple of spot-breasted young of the year, bathed in the shallows of the stream, vigorously dipping in the water and splashing it everywhere.  Apparently, one or two pairs of robins nested on the edge of the woods, as this familiar species of thrush traditionally has done through its life history.  Today, most robins raise offspring in young trees on lawns, reminescent of their nesting in saplings in woodland clearings before the coming of European colonists to North America.  
     A beautiful wood thrush, THEE bird of this woodlot, also bathed in the shallows of the stream at one point.  Warm-brown on top, which camouflages this species on the dead-leaf litter of eastern North American forest floors, wood thrushes are white underneath, sprinkled with black spots.  Occasionally, I could hear a wood thrush singing his flute-like "ee-o-lay" or " a-o-lee" songs back in the woods where the pair would nest in shrubbery.
     A lovely female Baltimore oriole often fluttered in and out of a black walnut tree along the edge of the woodlot bordering a meadow.  Some of the trees' limbs hung over the road I was on.  No doubt, the oriole was feeding young in a deeply-pouched cradle she built on the tips of a few twigs at the end of a branch hanging over the road.
     On one trip, I spotted a plain-brown, female indigo bunting feeding energetically on seeds of tall reed canary-grass on the sunny edge of the woods.  She and her blue-feathered mate have a nest somewhere in the thickets on the margin of the woods.        
     A few male black-winged damselflies fluttered beautifully and daintily above the stream in the woods as they competed for mating territory along that waterway.  They do have black wings, and iridescent-green abdomens that make them striking in the spotty sunlight of woodlands. 
     Female damselflies of this kind are sooty-gray all over.  They blend into their environment better than their mates, which is good for the species because they are the ones laying eggs.  Not all males of many species are needed for breeding.  
     Damselflies hatch under stones in streams and live there almost a year as larvae preying on tiny invertebrates.  But they go through four-stage metamorphosis and emerge from waterways as winged adults ready to catch and eat flying insects, and mate to produce another generation of themselves.
      I experienced a few other cold-blooded creatures in this woodlot in the few hours I was there.  One day I saw a young northern water snake sneaking through the shallows of the stream after black-nosed dace and blunt-nosed minnows.  Another day, I saw a garter snake undulating across the road I was on.  And one late-morning, I heard several male green frogs gulping and belching in pools back in the woods.  Some of those frogs would be fine, nightly food for local raccoons.
     Again, as always, most any habitat, including human-made ones, has interesting plants and wildlife.  All we have to do is to get and look for them.      
            

Young Creatures on Our Lawn

     One morning early in May of 2016, I saw three half-grown gray squirrels eating sunflower seeds on the ground with their mother, a quarter-grown cottontail rabbit ingesting grass and clover, and two recently-fledged mourning doves consuming bits of sunflower seeds on our lawn.  Annually I see many kinds of young creatures on our suburban lawn in New Holland, Pennsylvania, but not all at once.  Those youngsters are always entertaining and speak of reproductive success in our neighborhood year after year.  The young and their adaptable parents are lovely and interesting friends in our yard.  And they feed on many weed seeds and insects.
     The bushes, vines and trees planted on our lawn and in the neighborhood over the years provide natural shelter and food for these critters and others.  And sheds, bird houses, bird baths, bird feeders and decks in that same home area help entice and hold wildlife species here.
     The biggest family of nesting birds I see on our lawn is that of seed-eaters, including a pair each of permanent resident northern cardinals, song sparrows and house finches, and their offspring.  These are all pretty birds with lovely songs.  They come to our bird feeder and bird bath the year around.  And, sometimes, I see these birds feeding their fledged youngsters on our lawn.
     Mourning doves, most years, are in our yard the year around.  And they are one of the first birds to court in spring, often on warmer afternoons early in February.  Because each pair of doves raises two staggered broods of two young at the same time, it potentially can produce 12 youngsters in 6 months, or one pair of offspring per month, on average.  But because broods of baby doves are lost through strong wind breaking up their flimsy cradles or crows, opossums and other predators eating eggs or chicks, each pair doesn't bring 12 young to maturity in a year.
     House sparrows are originally from Europe, but have adapted well to North America, including in our neighborhood.  It seems there are as many house sparrows here as all other kinds of birds together.  These weaver finches from the Old World are attractive in their own plain way.  And they bring their recently-fledged chicks to the bird bath and bird feeder, where I mostly get to see them.    
     Permanent resident blue jays and migrant American robins and purple grackles all nest in neighborhood coniferous trees that provide dense cover.  The grackles hatch young in a group of half-grown Norway spruces in the neighborhood.  And I see the young of all these species in our yard for a few weeks until they gain the strength to move elsewhere. 
       Summering gray catbirds and house wrens hatch young in our yard and most years I see their young after they leave their nurseries.  Catbirds build twig cradles in bushes while house wrens nest in bird houses and tree cavities.  Both these species consume invertebrates.  Interestingly, I often see the catbirds watching mowers on the lawns.  The mowers flush out small moths and other kinds of insects the catbirds catch and eat.   
     And there are four other species of interesting wild animals that I have seen their young only once in our yard, though I know they are, as species, in the neighborhood much of the time.  One time, early in June, we had four recently-fledged screech owl youngsters on the four posts of our front porch railing, one on each post.  Another time a female opossum walked through our neighborhood with about five cute, little young on her back, each one with its tiny tail curled over hers.  I saw a brood of baby chickadees on our lawn one summer.  They hatched in a wren house we erected in the yard.  And one spring, a mallard hen hatched 12 ducklings under a bush on our lawn.  When the hen left her nursery with her young, the cute, little babies followed her like a winding stream of fuzz all in a line.
     Suburban lawns with their trees, shrubbery, bird feeders and baths, and out-buildings can be interesting wildlife habitats.  Wherever a species of life's needs are met, there it will be.