FINGER OF THE CHESAPEAKE

      This November, I stopped along a stretch of Mill Creek in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania farmland to see what birds and mammals were stirring.  I occasionally visit that part of Mill Creek in winter because I sometimes see a small variety of water-loving birds on the creek, and surrounding meadows, rye fields and harvested corn fields where some of those lovely and interesting water birds rest and feed on various vegetation.  

     Within a half hour during that stop this November, I saw several majestic Canada geese quietly grazing on short grass in a pasture along the creek and a stately great blue heron wading stealthily in the creek while watching carefully for fish to catch and eat.  And I noticed three elegant, immature bald eagles perched majestically in a tree along Mill Creek.  Those eagles were as brown as the limbs they stood on.

     Watching those water birds along Mill Creek, I thought of other adaptable bird species I saw in that same section of creek in winters past.  At some times in winter, I've seen exciting flocks of pretty ring-billed gulls on the creek to rest and drink, and on meadows and fields to eat invertebrates.  Once I saw a group of elegant, north-bound tundra swans joining gatherings of Canada geese and American wigeon ducks in grazing on short grass in a pasture and shoveling up corn kernels in a harvested corn field, as they do by Chesapeake Bay in winter.  And once, I spotted a few pairs of wintering lesser scaup ducks, a bay duck, on that part of Mill Creek. 

     Continuing to watch those handsome birds this November, I realized they and other water birds I saw along Mill Creek in past winters also winter on the Chesapeake Bay and the Susquehanna River.  Those birds along Mill Creek are icons of the Chesapeake and the Susquehanna.  The bay is the waterbody, rivers flowing into the bay are its arms and creeks are watery fingers on those arms.

     Many of each kind of adaptable birds mentioned here winter on the watery body of the Chesapeake Bay, its arms, including the Susquehanna River and the rivers' creek fingers, including Mill Creek.             

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