BREEDING BIRDS IN REMNANT WOODS

      During the summer of 2020, I watched the breeding birds in two remnant woodlands in farmland near my home in New Holland, Pennsylvania.  One woodlot is on a bottomland with a stream flowing through it, and the other one, about a mile away, is on slightly higher ground.  The second woodlot has a small, recreational park in it.  

     Both woods are about four acres in size and have tall trees, and thickets of shrubs and vines along their borders with fields and meadows.  And both woodlots are along blacktop, country roads, which offer easy access to both patches of woods in cropland.

     Several kinds of common, attractive woodland and thicket birds, including Carolina chickadees, tufted titmice, white-breasted nuthatches, downy woodpeckers, red-bellied woodpeckers, blue jays, northern cardinals, song sparrows, gray catbirds and Baltimore orioles,  are adaptable enough to nest in both these remnant woodlands near traffic and recreational activities.  All these birds, except catbirds and orioles, are permanent residents here, and most of them are camouflaged in woods and thickets, which helps protect them from predators.    

     But a few other kinds of adaptable birds breed in one patch of woods or the other, depending on the birds' needs.  The bottomland woods is flooded occasionally, and dominated by ash-leafed maple trees, silver maple trees, mottled sycamore trees and handsome black walnut trees.  The floor of that floodplain woods is covered by prostrate lesser celandine, which has, lovely, yellow blooms in April and tall garlic mustard plants that have many small, white blossoms during that same month.  And this woodlot has two small, traffic bridges over its stream.

     A pair of eastern phoebes, which are small, gray birds in the flycatcher family of birds, raises young in a mud and moss nursery on a support beam under each bridge.  The parent birds of each pair catch flying insects in mid-air in the woods and surrounding fields to feed their youngsters, and themselves.

     Phoebes traditionally nest on rock ledges under protective, overhanging boulders near small waterways in woods.  Their hatching offspring on support beams under sheltering bridges is a small departure from their original nesting niche.  Phoebes winter as far south as Central America.     

     A pair of pretty, elusive veeries, which are a kind of spot-breasted thrush, raised young in a leafy cradle on the dead-leaf  floor of the bottomland woods.  Veeries snare invertebrates they spot on woodland floors to feed their babies and themselves.  They are shaped like American robins, to which they are cousins, and run over woodland floors, like robins do on short-grass lawns, to get food.  Veeries winter in Central America.

     The slightly higher woodlot is composed mostly of tall, regal red oak trees and white oak trees, and is not susceptible to flooding.  Much of its floor is covered with May apple plants, "the umbrellas of elves". 

     This woods is a nesting habitat for a pair each of wood thrushes, ovenbirds and brown thrashers, in spite of recreational activities.  All these beautiful, adaptable species are brown on top, which camouflages them, and white below with rows of black spots on the white.

     Wood thrushes, veeries and ovenbids traditionally nested in larger forests.  But they've adapted to raising young in small woodlots when forests were removed to create farmland.  Wood thrushes and ovenbirds winter in Central America.

     These are a few kinds of birds that nest in large forests, but have also adapted to rearing offspring in much smaller woods created when the forests were removed for agriculture.  Adapting is a key to a species' success.