Adaptable Creatures in Parks

     I visited two locations in the Middle Atlantic States in January, 2015 where I saw a limited variety of birds and animals, but large numbers of the adaptable, wintering species that were there.  The two places were Northeast, Maryland a backwater at the top of the Chesapeake Bay and Long's Park with its many mature trees in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
     Ring-billed gulls, Canada geese and fish crows were constantly active in big numbers on the ice, water and lawns of Northeast on the Upper Chesapeake, and in the air over Northeast.  There were also a few each of herring gulls, great black-backed gulls and great blue herons on the ice among the many resting ring-bills.  Feathers and bird poop were highly visible everywhere on the ice, indicating birds in big numbers were there continually from the time the ice formed.  The birds and their activities were seen from a public park along the Northeast Creek where it enters the bay in Northeast.     
     All those birds in large numbers put on quite a show the whole time I was in that shoreline park.  A few of the ring-bills chased each other for tidbits of food that was found.  The ring-bills were also constantly coming and going in the air, perhaps to feeding fields and hack to the water and ice to rest in comparative safety.  The sky was often full of ring-billed gulls, both near and far. 
     The ring-bills soar gracefully and form  swirling "kettles" of themselves in the air.  Occasionally those ring-bills left the ice, water and lawn in one big mass of thousands when a bald eagle flew over them.  That cloud of gulls would whirl over the Northeast neck of the estuary, then settle on the ice, water and lawn again.           
     Hundreds of Canada geese were on a large lawn to eat grass when I first arrived at the park.  But after a while, they walked, then flew, to the water and ice of the backwater where they rested, socialized and preened their feathers until hungry again.  Canadas also regularly fly to nearby harvested cornfields where they consume corn kernels lying in the fields.  But they go back to the bay for safety when done feeding in the fields. 
     The fish crows were constantly noisy with their incessant, nasal cawing that sounds different than the cawing of American crows, a way to identify the two species.  These crows were in the trees, and standing on lawns and ice when not feeding.  Like gulls, crows of every kind are scavengers, eating anything edible they can handle in a variety of habitats, including in fields, on lawns and mall parking lots, the shores of larger bodies of water and so on.  The few hours I was at the Northeast Park, some of the fish crows and ring-bills were walking slowly on a lawn to ingest any edibles they could find.  But both these species of birds can fly some distance to get food, then come back to the park to rest and digest in safety.
     Long's Park has many large Norway spruce trees and a variety of mature, majestic deciduous trees, including sugar maples, red oaks, American beeches, sycamores, tulip trees and some kind of ash,  that are as attractive in winter as they are any other season.  The brownish-gray bark of those trees is pretty when highlighted by snow on the ground.  Some of the bigger trees, particularly sugar maples, are riddled with holes where wind ripped limbs off the trees, exposing the wood underneath to agents of decay, including weather, insects and fungi. 
     Gray squirrels live in great abundance at Long's Park, partly because of the many hollows in the stately trees they live in.  I see several of these squirrels every time I visit the park throughout the year.  There they eat acorns, seeds and berries, and hand outs from well-meaning people.
     Sometimes in winter I see one or two red-tailed hawks perched in tall trees in the park.  Those hawks are watching for gray squirrels to catch and eat. 
     And sometimes there is a pair of great horned owls nesting in a high conifer in the park.  They, too, will kill squirrels, but usually at dawn and dusk when both the owls and squirrels are active. 
     In recent years, thousands of noisy American crows, that nest in forests in Canada and winter here in Lancaster County, as well as other places in the Lower 48, stage each late afternoon in winter in the tall trees of Long's Park before roosting in trees there and in trees in nearby Park City shopping mall.  Those crows create an intriguing, inspiring spectacle for over an hour as they stream into Long's Park from every direction, making the black lake of themselves in the tops of many of the taller trees become ever larger where they caw boisterously all the while.  Those great flocks of noisy crows are neat to see under clear, sunny skies or cloudy ones, and especially with snow on the ground and in the trees.  Like gulls, sometimes the whole mass of crows lifts off the trees, with a terrific racket of scornful voices, circles in the sky, then lands on the trees again.
     These are just a couple of public, manicured places where adaptable species of creatures winter in spite of human activities.  Those animals have a future because they are so adaptable and we people benefit from enjoying them.                

Waterfowl Wonders

     I have pleasant memories of three inspiring encounters with migrant geese and swans early in spring over the years in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  The first is about Canada geese one morning early in March when I lived in Neffsville.  I was in our yard early in the morning when I noticed a few flocks of loudly honking Canada geese flying directly north low over our neighborhood.  Then I saw more groups and more coming from the south and heading north right over our neighborhood, from horizon to horizon. What a sight, and their bugling was nearly deafening.  Now my eyes were riveted to the sky to see what would unfold. 
     As the morning progressed, the hordes of Canada geese became continuous, with several flocks in view at once over our neighborhood.  I could see gangs of them from horizon to horizon in all directions.  By this time I thought all the Canada geese that nest in Canada were leaving the Chesapeake Bay at once and going north to their breeding territories.  What a dramatic, inspiring sight they were, all heading north, honking loudly, wave after wave.  The combination of time of year, longer periods of daylight each succeeding day and warmer temperatures finally pushed those geese into the first lap of their migration north to their nesting grounds in eastern Canada  
     It wasn't until late morning that they had finally gone by and I could go in the house to warm up and calm my senses from such a wild, dramatic wonder as those north-bound Canada geese. 
     After dusk when the sunset was almost gone one evening early in March of another year, I noticed airborne tundra swans circling fields around Neffsville as if they wanted to land on one of them to feed on waste corn kernels on the ground.  I walked a half mile out to a field of corn stubble where it looked like the swans would land and laid on my back among the stubble and faced the remnant sunset.  Soon the swans started coming down to the field, bit by bit, silhouetted dark against the western sky.  Many of them repeatedly vocalized their soft, pleasant, "woo-hoo, woo-hoo,hoo". 
     Some of the swans came down within several yards of me lying quietly on my back in that field.  Apparently they didn't see me.  I laid there for a while listening to the swans and seeing some of them parachute down to the field in the light of a three-quarter moon. 
     But after a while I had to go home.  I slowly rolled over, stood up and walked quietly out of the field, alarming some nearby swans into flight as I progressed.  I walked home still listening to those swans as they fed on waste corn kernels.
     The third encounter of migrant waterfowl was hordes of snow geese at Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area.  My wife and I drove there to see the snow geese and tundra swans, again around the beginning of March.  We saw the snows were leaving the large, human-made impoundment, flock after flock, and landing in a field near a road.  We drove to that road, parked near where the snow geese were coming down and stayed in the car.  We opened a couple of windows a bit to hear the high-pitched honking of the snow geese.  Other people were doing the same, although some of them got out of their vehicles, which didn't seem to disturb the geese. 
     As each noisy gang of snow geese came down to the field, it landed closer to the road.  Then some groups of snows landed on the other side of the road.  We were closely surrounded by bugling snow geese as if we were in their flock.  And, in a way, we were!  What a thrill; snow geese all around us feeding in the fields.
     But, as is their way, the thousands of snows all took flight at once at one point in time, though I couldn't see what startled them.  They went up with a deafening roar of voices and wings, blocking out the background scenery as would a blizzard and went aloft, with never a collision among their fellows.  Again, what an inspiring, exciting sight they were. 
     But within a few weeks, or a month, of staging here in Lancaster County as they wait for spring to catch up to their restless urges, the tundra swans and snow geese continue their migration north, little by little to their nesting territories on the Arctic tundra.  Winter weather farther north stops them for a while, but soon they are continuing north again, entering the tundra about the middle of May.
     Although these birds are inspiring and exciting to experience, in a way I am glad to see them going farther north.  Those great flocks of waterfowl are wonderful, but my emotions can take them only for so long.  I need to get away from them to rest my worn-out emotions.    
     These are just a few examples of inspiring nature in Pennsylvania.  There are innumerable others, all over the world.               

Field Birds' Alternate Foods

     Several kinds of wintering, seed-eating birds, including horned larks and their sparrow-sized associates, a variety of waterfowl, rock pigeons, mourning doves, American crows, house sparrows and savannah sparrows, consume corn kernels and weed and grass seeds from manure strips in fields, horse droppings on rural roads, and country roadsides cleared of snow after snow buries that food in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania farmland, as elsewhere.  Most of these birds are difficult to see before a snowfall because of their blending into their usual open, wind-swept environment.  But snow makes them more visible to us. 
     After a snowfall, manure is spread on top of the snow.  Bits of corn kernels, chewed by livestock, but not digested, are in those strips of livestock droppings.  Several kinds of open-country birds are on those manure strips, many kinds at once, putting on an interesting show.  Flocks of sparrow-sized horned larks, sometimes with a few each of equally-sized, tundra-breeding snow buntings and Lapland longspurs in them, walk on the manure to pick out bits of corn with their small beaks.  Meanwhile, gatherings of pigeons, doves, crows, house sparrows and savannah sparrows do the same.  However, permanent resident mallard ducks and Canada geese, and north-bound snow geese and tundra swans early in spring scoop out corn with their large, shovel-like bills.          
     When snow buries weed and grass seeds and corn kernels in the fields, some groups of horned larks and their allies, and house sparrows and savannah sparrows, feed on bits of corn in horse droppings on country roads.  It's always interesting to see these little birds on those "road apples" to get food.  The birds are quick enough to zip into the air at the approach of an occasional vehicle, then drop to the road again to get food from the horse manure. 
     And as snow plows clear rural roads of snow, they scrape many stretches of the shoulders free of snow as well, thus exposing weed  and grass seeds and tiny bits of stones to the small, cropland birds desperate for food in their open habitat.  Again, horned larks and their associates, pigeons, doves, house sparrows and savannah sparrows ingest weed and grass seeds.  And they also consume the small stones, which grind the seeds in their powerful stomachs, aiding digestion of that hard food.
     Though Lancaster County cropland looks bleak in winter, with little or no food and shelter, that farmland is more populated with hardy, adaptable species of birds than most people realize.  And those birds know how to get alternate foods when their usual foods are buried by snow.        

Adaptable, Wintering, Farmland Birds

     The day after a couple of days of light snow toward the end of January, 2015, I drove through farmland that was harvested to the ground a few miles south of New Holland, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  My goal, again, was to see how field birds and birds around seepages and trickles of clear, running water adapted to the three to four inches of snow on the ground.
     As I drove slowly through that cropland for a couple of hours, I saw the usual field hawks of mid-winter, including an American kestrel on a roadside wire watching for field voles (a kind of mouse) and six red-tailed hawks that were looking for any kind of prey they could handle.  Two of the red-tails were a mated pair.
     I saw a few flocks each of rock pigeons and starlings on the snow in the fields as they poked their beaks under the snow to get corn kernels still on the ground.  Both these species are from European farmland, but they adapted well to American cropland and are permanent residents in agricultural areas and cities in this country.  I also saw a few mourning doves and several crows in the fields to eat whatever waste corn they could find.  Doves and crows are native birds that have adapted to farmland to get food through the year. 
     But, as usual, many large flocks of northern horned larks were the dominate species of birds in those extensive fields.  They are called horned because they have two black feather tufts on their heads that resemble horns.  They have yellow faces highlighted by patterns of black.  But being mostly brown and the size of sparrows, horned larks are not often noticed until snow covers the ground.  Then they are more obvious because snow takes away their camouflage and the birds settle on roadsides to eat tiny stones, exposed by snow plows, that help grind the seeds in their stomachs. 
     Horned larks get seeds and bits of corn kernels from bare parts of the fields where wind blew the snow away.  Those bare spots shift position at the whim of the wind, and grow larger as the snow gradually melts away.  Flocks of larks fly in bounding flight low to the fields quite often in their search for seeds and bits of corn on the ground.
     But the little seepages and trickles of clear, running water, some of them partly choked with water cress plants, and all of them free of ice and snow in winter in farmland meadows in Lancaster County are more interesting than the fields after a snowfall.  Here wintering Wilson's snipe, which is a kind of inland sandpiper, poke their long beaks into mud under the shallow water after a variety of aquatic invertebrates.  But snipe are almost impossible to see until they fly or otherwise move because they are beautifully brown, streaked with black markings that allow them to blend into their surroundings.
     That day in late January, 2015, when I drove through farmland, I saw several snipe in those little, watercress-filled rivulets and a few species of small, camouflaged field birds as well.  Those birds, including a couple of killdeer plovers, several American pipits and a few each of song sparrows and savannah sparrows were along those trickles to get invertebrates and seeds to eat, which they couldn't get because of the snow on the ground.  These birds, too, are easily overlooked because they are small and mostly brown which camouflages them. 
     The little flocks of pipits, which are here for the winter from their Arctic tundra breeding grounds, were the most interesting of the small birds along seepages and trickles.  They not only walked along the muddy, snow-free shores of the waters, but were light-in-weight enough to actually walk on top of the watercress in their constant search for invertebrates, something I had never seen them do before.  They pumped their tails up and down as they walked, as pipits do, perhaps to mimic the action of small debris bobbing in the water along shorelines, which is a form of blending in.
     It seemed that all those farmland birds had adapted well to the snow on the ground.  And they were interesting for me to experience that day.    

Fiddler Crabs

     Fiddler crabs are cute little coastal creatures with an interesting courtship, though they are overlooked by most people because they are small, secretive and camouflaged.  Most species of fiddlers are about one and a half inches across at maturity.  And like all crabs, fiddlers have ten legs, the front two of which are modified into claws or pincers.  They use the other eight legs to walk sideways in search of food and mates.  Their exoskeletons, or shells, are hard, but they periodically shed their shells so they can grow.  The soft shell under the hard one becomes stiffer within several days after the older one is shed.  But fiddlers hide until those new shells do become hard.  Also, if a leg or pincer was lost in the old shell, that leg or pincer will be part of the new one. 
     There are several species of them, each of which survives about two years at most and lives in burrows the crabs dig themselves in the mud of salt marshes and mud beaches and the sand of sandy beaches on the shores of West Africa, the western Atlantic Ocean and the eastern Pacific Ocean.  I have seen colonies of fiddlers around their burrows at several far-flung places, including along the Delaware River at Delaware City, Delaware, on mud flats at Stone Harbor, New Jersey and sandy places along the harbor in Charleston, South Carolina.     
          Males of each kind of fiddler have a front claw that is as big as the rest of its body and certainly much larger than its other pincer, which is used to gather food in the mud or sand the crabs live in.  The rapid action of the small claw moving from the mud or sand to the crab's mouth looks like it is rubbing against the much larger pincer, hence looking like the action of fiddling, which gives the fiddlers their common name. 
     Each male fiddler waves his large claw to attract the attention of females so they will see him and mate with him.  Males also use their larger claws to intimidate or fight rival males to gain possession of nearby females for breeding.  If a male loses the bigger pincer, the smaller one grows larger and a new small one develops where the former big one was. 
     The larger claws of male fiddlers became that way over time by selection by the females.  Each female fiddler, which has two small pincers by he way, chooses a breeding partner by claw size and the way in which he waves it.  The higher the quality of the wave display, the more health and vigor is needed to do it.  Females choose males with the most vigor, which ensures they will help produce healthy offspring. 
     Each female fiddler spawns her eggs in a mass down her burrow for safety for herself and the eggs.  She carries that blob of eggs on her underside for two weeks.  Then she leaves her tunnel to release her eggs into the receding tide where the young float in the current and filter tiny edibles from the water.  Eventually each tiny crab matures and settles again on the land, digging burrows in the sand or mud for protection from predators and growing to maturity.
     Adult fiddlers have several predators that eat them when opportunities arise to do so.  A variety of gulls and herons, plus raccoons and other predatory critters eat fiddler crabs when they catch them out of their sheltering tunnels.
     Fiddler crabs are interesting little creatures.  But one usually has to look for these camouflaged denizens of mud flats and sandy beaches along ocean coastlines to experience them.  Their most outstanding feature is, of course, the males' one very large claw they use for displaying to the females and fighting other males.    

Blue Crabs

     Blue crabs are good eating, but they are far more than that.  Though they usually are difficult to see in the larger bodies of water they inhabit, these crustaceans, which are related to shrimp and lobsters, are an attractive, interesting form of life that lives in brackish to salt water along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts from Nova Scotia to the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Islands and down the South American Atlantic Coast to northern Argentina.  They are also in most of the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays, and back waters behind barrier islands along the Atlantic Coast.  They are named for the blue legs of adult blue crabs, although mature females have red tips on their blue pincers, making them even more attractive. 
     The top shells of blue crabs reach nine inches across upon maturity and are mottled brown for camouflage on the bottoms of large waters.  Those shells have several sharp points on their edges to defend their owners from predation to some extent.  The bottom shells of blue crabs are much lighter than the top ones because their was no habitat pressure on the bottom ones to blend in to their surroundings since they aren't visible anyway. 
     Crab shells usually are hard, but crabs, like many invertebrates, have exoskeletons, meaning their hard parts are on the outside for defense.  To be able to grow, crabs, and other crustaceans, have to shed their hard shells.  But there is another, soft, shell underneath that grows and allows the growth of the crabs' bodies.  Those crabs are called soft-shelled and they hide and don't eat until their new shells are hard enough to defend their owners.  Each crab sheds its shell several times in its lifetime.   
     Each crab has ten legs, of which the back pair are paddle-like for swimming and the front pair are pincers for picking up food and defense.  Crabs use their other legs for walking sideways on the bottoms of waters. 
     Blue crabs are omnivores that live on the bottoms of larger, brackish bodies of water.  They ingest mollusks, including oysters, plant material and carrion, all items they can easily get a hold of.  They even bury themselves in the mud of those bottoms during winter to protect themselves from cold and predation. 
     Unfortunately, blue crabs have declined in numbers because of over-harvesting and habitat loss.  But they are making a comeback in many parts of their natural range, and they have been introduced to other parts of the world, including in the Mediterranean and around Japan, for example.
     Blue crabs have a rather complex reproductive system.  Males live in fresher water while females live in saltier water, which means there is less competition for food between the genders, meaning more of them could survive with a greater amount of food for each gender.  Blue crabs spawn in the high-salt  areas of their habitats.  Each female spawns once in her lifetime, spawning up to two million tiny eggs in a mass that is attached to her abdomen for the eggs' protection. 
     Baby blue crabs grow in several stages after hatching and leaving their mothers' abdomens.  The first is zoeae, which are tiny, float on the surface of the ocean and feed by filtering tiny edibles from the water.  Megalops is the next stage, which swims freely near the bottom.  Finally, each individual is crab-like in shape as it gets older and bigger.  And these crabs seek brackish water rather than salt water as they mature. 
     But blue crabs are preyed on by many kinds of predators in each stage of their lives, which means very few mature and reproduce.  Adult crabs, the ones we are most likely to experience, are eaten by large fish, sea turtles, certain kinds of diving ducks, raccoons, a variety of herons and many other kinds of predators. 
     Blue crabs are beautiful, intriguing critters that deserve protection from overharvesting and habitat loss.  They can be taken for human food, but only in a way that they won't be in danger of extinction.
When along the seacoast or an estuary, look for these lovely crabs.        

Birds in a Winter Woodlot

     There is a bottomland, deciduous woodlot with a stream flowing through just a mile south of New Holland, Pennsylvania.  In winter it seems barren of bird life at first glance, but it isn't.  I spent an hour at a time, four times along a country road on the edge of that woods in January and saw several kinds of wintering birds in it. 
     The usual small, woodland birds were there, including Carolina chickadees, tufted titmice, white-breasted nuthatches, downy woodpeckers, red-bellied woodpeckers and blue jays.  All those birds of each species was attractive in its own way and all but the jays were camouflaged in the gray of winter woods.  The chickadees and titmice were in a small, mixed group of both kinds roaming among the trees seeking dormant invertebrates and their eggs in bark crevices and under scales of leaf buds.
     Woodpeckers chipped and pecked here and there on dead wood after invertebrates nestled in the wood.  Their sharp toe nails and stiff tail feathers held the birds upright on the tree bark as they foraged for food.   
     The nuthatch I saw walked down a tree trunk head first as it peered into cracks in the bark for invertebrates and their eggs.  All species of nuthatches are the only birds on Earth that can walk head first down upright tree trunks and limbs.
     Several types of seed-eating birds of the sparrow/finch family also wintered in that woodlot.  They included permanent resident northern cardinals, song sparrows, American goldfinches and house finches, and wintering dark-eyed juncos and white-throated sparrows, each species of which are quite beautiful.  These birds, but not all at once, were on the ground and weeds along the woods edge eating weed seeds.  Most of them, however, flew up into the shrubbery when an occasional vehicle went by. 
     A couple local members of the thrush family, American robins and eastern bluebirds, were also along the edge of this woodlot, one time each and not at the same time.  The robins were in a small, bordering pasture on a warm afternoon looking for invertebrates and anything else edible to them. They flew into the woods when traffic went by, but soon went back to the meadow to forage.
     The bluebirds were there to consume berries on multiflora rose bushes and poison ivy vines along the edge of the woods.  These birds paid no attention to the occasional passing vehicle.
     One afternoon, for a few minutes, I saw a red-tailed hawk circling the woodlot in search of gray squirrels that abound there.  And on another day, late in the afternoon, I heard the loud hooting of a mated pair of great horned owls that perched somewhere back in the woods.  What a thrilling wild sound that hooting was.
     But the highlights of this patch of woods I saw late one morning.  I noticed a slight motion along the stream, and looking at that spot with my 16 power binoculars, I was excited to see a hermit thrush picking up and eating invertebrates along the water's stony shore.  What a lovely and petite bird; warm-brown on top and white underneath with a dark-spotted chest.  The thrush ran about on its long, slender legs, stopping here and there to pick up an invertebrate, and sometimes pumping its rusty tail up and down slowly, as all members of its species do, perhaps as a communication.
     While watching the lovely thrush with my field glasses, a winter wren suddenly came into view.  Winter wrens are famous for wintering along streams in woods so I should not have been surprised to see it.  The wren was tiny, like a feathered mouse, warm-brown all over and constantly kept its short tail pointing upward.  It constantly hopped right along the stream, supposedly catching and ingesting tiny invertebrates still active because of the running, warming water.
     That little woodlot was rich with a variety of wintering birds.  Readers only have to get out to various habitats to see communities of wildlife as interesting as this one.