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- Written by Clyde McMillan-Gamber Clyde McMillan-Gamber
During the late afternoon of June 10 of this year, I was on our lawn in New Holland enjoying sun-soaked green trees and shrubbery and listening to mourning doves and house finches.
Suddenly, two turkey vultures swooped low overhead and landed in a tall tree in a little patch of trees across the street from our house, probably to spend the night. I guessed for a couple of years that those vultures were roosting every evening in our area, but I didn’t know where until that moment.
After seeing those turkey vultures going to roost, I was reminded of other exciting wildlife I saw in that clump of trees through the years.
During evenings in August and September, I hear several male true katydids debating whether Katy did or didn’t. They chant that message with a file on one wing and a scraper on the other that they rub together to attract females for mating.
Related to grasshoppers, katydids have large back legs for leaping. And katydids are totally green to blend into the foliage they also ingest in the treetops.
Some summer evenings I see a few bats swooping out of that patch of trees. Each silhouetted bat flutters and dives erratically after flying insects it consumes in mid-air. But soon it vanishes because it seeks other hunting skies for a night-long insect feast.
One evening the end of May one year, we saw a family of five beautiful screech owls perching stalwartly on the railing of our front porch. I think the young owls hatched in a hollow in a tree across the street and had just left their nursery for a night’s hunting of mice with their parents. They sure were cute the short time they were visiting us.
Another year, from mid-May to the middle of June, I heard a male wood thrush singing lovely, flute-like notes in that stand of trees, off and on all day, every day. Since thrushes are woodland species, I was surprised to hear him in such a small clump of trees. But, I think he never attracted a mate to raise young there.
During September and October, gray squirrels and blue jays harvest acorns from a few pin oak trees in that patch of trees and stash many of them away for winter use. The jays’ blue feathers are exceptionally attractive among the red and brown oak foliage when those birds flash in and out of those striking trees.
One winter day, I saw two black vultures eating something on the ground under those trees. With binoculars, I saw they were sharing a dead gray squirrel.
It’s delightfully amazing the wildlife one experiences in any one place, over time. Readers can do that too, right at home.
Clyde McMillan-Gamber is a retired Lancaster County Parks naturalist.