START OF SUMMER'S MATURING

     Recently, I was driving along a country road in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and enjoying the beauty and lushness of trees, meadows, field corn, soybeans and roadside flowers along the way.  At one point, I drove between long fields of tall corn on both sides of the road, creating a tunnel without a roof, except the sky.  Tall grasses and flowering plants vegetated the roadsides between the blacktop and the corn.  Small groups of stream-lined purple martins and barn swallows flashed over the corn fields and the road to catch and eat flying insects, as I cruised by.  Those two local, post-breeding swallow species were gaining fat and strength for their meandering south to avoid the northern winter and find food in warmer climes.  Their gatherings are one of the first signs of the coming autumn.  

     Little gatherings of house sparrows hopped along the edge of that road to eat weed and grass seeds, and insects.  These permanent resident sparrows, and the swallows, do not compete for food at all.

     Each summer in southeastern Pennsylvania begins to mature in the latter part of July, when daylight each successive day continues to decrease a couple of minutes a day.  Plants, both cultivated and wild, have reached their optimum height and are flowering beautifully, or developing seeds.  

     Several kinds of flowering plants, including pasture thistles, chicory, Queen-Anne's-lace, common milkweed and red clover, are still commonly blooming along country roadsides.  And foxtail grass, wire grass, red root, lamb's quarters, bindweeds and velvetleaf are developing seeds along the same roads.

     Insects live abundantly among those roadside plants, including Japanese beetles, field crickets, a few kinds of grasshoppers and a variety of moths and butterflies.  The grasshoppers and beetles are there to eat the vegetation, while the moths and butterflies, including monarch, cabbage white and yellow clearwing butterflies, are there to sip sugary nectar from milkweed, red clover and thistle blooms.

     By late July, locally-nesting purple martins and barn swallows prepare to drift south to find reliable sources of flying insects, while avoiding the northern winter.  Several handsome individuals of both species line up, interestingly, on roadside wires between feeding forays over nearby fields.  There they rest, digest, preen their feathers and socialize.  

     And when hungry, they forage for flying insects by sweeping and swooping swiftly over fields, abruptly twisting and turning to catch their prey in their large mouths.  They are entertaining to watch flashing rapidly over the fields, and weaving among their relatives, without collision. 

     Gatherings of a few kinds of southbound sandpipers around puddles in local fields by late July are another early indication of fall's coming.  Small groups of sparrow-sized and brown least and semi-palmated sandpipers, down from nesting on the Arctic tundra, and a few lesser yellowlegs that raised young around lakes in Canada's forests, stop at those puddles to feed on invertebrates emerging from the soil to avoid drowning.    

     Summer starts maturing in farmland by late July: One can see it and feel it.  The seasons are fleeting and we should enjoy them while we can, and where we can.     

          

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