EMERGING CONIFERS

      I like where southeastern Pennsylvania's woods, thickets and maturing suburbs mix.  I also like a mix of colorful, deciduous leaves and conifers' green needles at the end of October and into mid-November.            

     By that time, most deciduous trees and shrubs are bare.  As curtains of dead, colored foliage fall away in suburban areas, the green beauties of planted conifers become ever more visible.  And the few red, brown and yellow leaves still remaining on some trees and bushes offer a lovely contrast to the green coniferous trees.  Those remnant autumn leaves still on their woody twigs and evergreen needles compliment each other's beauties into the middle of November.  And dead, but lovely, fallen  leaves are scattered over the ground of the still-green lawns, making that human-made niche more beautiful.  And woods and thickets become wilder looking as autumn slips into winter.  We can feel rushes of wild in ourselves when viewing such natural sights on a gray day in November.  

     Southeastern Pennsylvania has few wild coniferous trees.  Red junipers commonly colonize abandoned fields and roadsides here.  A few each of white pines and pitch pines grow on local, wooded mountaintops, while eastern hemlocks inhabit cool, shady ravines along the Susquehanna River.  But  pines, spruces, firs, hemlocks and other kinds of conifers in the suburbs were planted there for the beauties of their evergreen, fragrant needles, the trees' handsome shapes and their attractive cones.  Those conifers also offer wind breaks and food and cover for certain kinds of adaptable wildlife in the suburbs.     

     In October and November, energetic gray squirrels, handsome eastern chipmunks and lovely blue jays busily gather and store nuts from majestic beeches, oaks and hickories that have lovely, colored leaves.  Individuals of each of these forest species, adapted to suburbs, stash many nuts in tree cavities and holes they dig in the ground.  Chipmunks store their food in their underground burrows.  Jays have beautiful, blue feathers that flash wonderfully among the warm-colored foliage of those trees.  

     Meanwhile, some American goldfinches, house finches and Carolina chickadees scramble over coniferous cones still in the trees to eat the seeds in those cones.  These pretty birds also pick seeds out of cones fallen to the ground.             

     Late each winter afternoon, starting around the beginning of November, several kinds of birds, including little flocks of dark-eyed juncos, mourning doves and American robins, nestle into half-grown conifers that have densely-packed boughs of needles that block cold, winter winds.  The juncos and doves fed on weed and grass seeds all day, while the robins consumed berries.  But as the sun sets, these birds retire into the conifers' snugness to spend the night.  One can see the white V's of the juncos' tails as they disappear into the dark recesses of the needled branches.

     Some Cooper's hawks and red-tailed hawks roost for the night in taller conifers.  Close to sunset, one can see them skimming over the treetops and flash out of sight among needled limbs to spend the night in relative comfort and warmth.   

     As those birds retreat for the night, long-eared owls and great horned owls emerge from tall evergreens' needled boughs to begin a night's hunt of mice and other small creatures.  These owls are usually visible to us right after sunset when coniferous and deciduous trees are silhouetted black before the brilliant western sky.  Sometimes, I hear pairs of horned owls hooting to each other, and maybe, I will see one perched, silhouetted, on top of a tall conifer.  

     I also like to see the full moon, or nearly so, rise behind bare, lacy-looking deciduous trees and full-bodied conifers, especially when snow is on the ground.  The moon, snow and trees together make the night in suburbs and fields become a fairyland of beauty.

     Watch for beauties of nature in woods, thickets and suburbs from November into winter.  There is always much loveliness to experience through every season. 

     

     

        

     

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