BIRDS AT MCDONALD'S

      One day in May, 2020, my wife and I had lunch at McDonald's in New Holland, Pa.  Because of the pandemic, we dined in our vehicle in the McDonald's parking lot.  And during our half-hour stay in our car on that lot, we were entertained by a few kinds of common, adaptable birds, including a few each of house sparrows, starlings, purple grackles, a pair of northern mockingbirds, a pair of gray catbirds, a couple American robins and a male northern cardinal getting food from that lot and the short-grass lawn around it.  While watching those birds feeding in human-made habitats, I thought about how adaptable and successful in life those birds, and many other kinds, are because they make use of human-made niches, including those at many McDonald's restaurants, for example.  

     The house sparrows, starlings, grackles, mockers and catbirds were all scavenging crumbs from the parking lot while we were there.  Some of those birds were right outside our car.  The robins were running across the lawn and stopping to watch and listen for invertebrates at the grass roots level.  And the cardinal was perched high in one of a line of bushes behind the lawn.         

     House sparrows commonly live around buildings, particularly where they find weed and grass seeds or grain in bird feeders.  And where they can raise young in sheltering crevices in those structures.

     Small groups of starlings and grackles travel some little distance across the countryside from their sheltering overnight roosts to find a variety of food in lawns, fields, and around McDonald's, and places like them.  Starlings also nest in cracks in buildings while grackles mostly hatch babies in sheltering, half-grown coniferous trees planted on lawns.  

     Robins rear offspring in grass and mud nurseries they build in young, planted trees on lawns, almost no matter where those lawns are.  And cardinals hatch young in planted, dense shrubbery, including behind McDonald's.

     I've seen other kinds of adaptable, common birds feeding at other, local McDonald's parking lots and lawns over the years, including Canada geese, American crows, ring-billed gulls, rock pigeons, mourning doves, song sparrows and chipping sparrows.  The geese grazed on short grass on the lawns.  But the other birds mostly ate crumbs off the parking lots.  

     All these birds, but the sparrows, travel some distance to get food.  The geese and gulls come from ponds, lakes and waterways.  The crows, pigeons and doves are from farmland.  But the song sparrows and chipping sparrows live in nearby plants of shrubbery where they nest, and have overnight lodging.

     Song sparrows are permanent residents wherever they are.  And if there is a built habitat near their bushy niche they can take advantage of, they will.  

     I've seen chipping sparrows eating crumbs from the floors of park pavilions during summer.  They surprised me, but most any species of life is, or can be, adaptable.       

     Being adaptable is a key to success.  And these birds, and any form of life that can take advantage of McDonald's parking lots and other built habitats to obtain food and shelter, have  a good chance of being successful on Earth.  Adaptable species have a future on this planet.     

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