WINTER THICKETS

     Thickets of shrubbery, vines and sapling trees provide food and cover for a variety of birds and mammals in southeastern Pennsylvania during winter.  Most thickets in this area are human-made, caused by timbering, fires and cultivation that was abandoned.  Thickets also form along sunny woodland edges bordering fields and hedgerows between fields.  Young vegetation develops quickly, and thickly, in full sunlight, providing shelter in abundance that wildlife uses, including in winter.

     Berries are some of the main wildlife foods in thickets during winter.  Shrubs with decorative, red berries include multiflora rose, Tatarian honeysuckle and barberries.  Staghorn sumac trees have fuzzy, red berries in pyramid-shaped clusters.  Vines that drape over trees and bushes include bittersweet that produce striking, orange berries, while poison ivy vines bear off-white ones and Virginia creepers produced deep-purple ones.  Hackberry trees have dark berries through winter.  Some locally wintering creatures that feed on those berries are squirrels, mice, northern mockingbirds, American robins, eastern bluebirds, cedar waxwings and other kinds of birds and mammals that also shelter in those thickets. The birds and mammals add their beauties and intrigues to those of the berries.  

     While squirrels and mice digest seeds, pulp and all of berries, birds digest the pulp of berries, but pass seeds in their droppings, thus spreading the plants into new ground.  Birds insure future food.     

     Mockingbirds try to chase away other berry-eaters to keep patches of berries for themselves, but often to no avail.  Mockers don't move around much, so if their berries are eaten up by other critters, the mockingbirds could starve.    

     Red juniper trees grow tiny, berry-like cones that are pale-blue, and edible to berry-eating birds and rodents.  Those little cones, and the evergreen trees that bear them, are attractive in abandoned fields.        Wild fruits available in winter include wild grapes and attractive crab apples.  White-tailed deer, red foxes, striped skunks, opossums, raccoons, rodents, American robins, starlings and other critters ingest many wild grapes and crab apples in thickets during winter.        

     A variety of weeds and grasses produce seeds by autumn.  Many of those seeds are ingested by deer mice, meadow voles, northern cardinals, song sparrows, white-throated sparrows, dark-eyed juncos, American goldfinches, house finches and mourning doves through winter.  Cottontail rabbits eat the greens themselves.  These plants also provide cover against predators and weather closer to the ground.

     Hawks, owls, weasels, foxes and other predators prey on some of the wildlife living in thickets.  Red-tailed hawks, great honed owls and red foxes are large enough to catch gray squirrels and cottontails.  Long-tailed weasels and screech owls are smaller and will most often chase mice.  Cooper's and sharp-shinned hawks go after birds of various sizes.  

     Human-made thickets are valuable to a variety of wintering birds and mammals that feed and hide in them.  And thickets are intriguing for us to explore, and enjoy some of their beauties.      

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