WINTERING KILLDEER AND LARKS

      On a sunny afternoon in mid-November of 2021, I saw a loose flock of about 36 handsome killdeer plovers in a low, soggy, short-grass pasture with a shallow brook flowing through it.  And a little later, I saw eight attractive northern horned larks in another, higher, drier meadow nearby.  Both species of native, wintering birds were searching for invertebrates in those human-made, short grass habitats in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. 

     I didn't see either groups of birds with my eyes alone when driving by the meadows because their camouflage is so good.  But knowing that both kinds of these birds were in those pastures before, I stopped to see if any were currently there with my 16 power pair of binoculars.  Obviously, they were. 

     While watching each type of birds a few minutes each, I again appreciated the beauty of each species, though both kinds are brown on top, making them invisible in short vegetation or bare ground, until those birds move across the ground or fly up.  Robin-sized killdeer have black and white-striped heads and two black collars on their chests, which distinguish them.  Sparrow-sized horned larks have a black mask over their eyes, a yellow bib under their beaks and one black collar under the bib, which identifies them.

     Killdeer are a kind of shorebird that adapted to open, inland locations, including built fields and pastures near streams and ponds.  They annually winter across much of the Lower 48, including here in Lancaster County, though they are seldom seen by most people.  

     When snow covers fields and meadows, local killdeer move to the shallow edges of the numerous streams and brooks in farmland.  There they eat invertebrates from the edges of the flowing waterways. 

     And when snow covers prairies, fields and meadows, and other open land, horned larks search for seeds from tall weeds and grasses in fields and along roadsides, bits of chewed, but undigested corn in livestock manure scattered in fields, and seeds and tiny bits of gravel along plowed, exposed roadsides.  Gravel helps grind the corn in lark stomachs.  

     Larks are much more noticeable along roadsides in farmland after a snowfall because they are not as camouflaged, and they are along the roads to ingest seeds and grit.  Flocks of larks fly up before oncoming vehicles on country roads and bound in flight low over the fields, where they suddenly drop to the snow, like grain thrown by hand to chickens.  

     Horned larks spend winter nights hunkered down among clods of soil or snow drifts, both of which block cold, winter wind.

     The attractive killdeer plovers and northern horned larks both winter in Lancaster County fields and pastures.  They make those built habitats more interesting during that harshest of seasons.       

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