EATING EXPOSED INVERTEBRATES

      On March 19 of this year, I stopped my car to scan a recently plowed field to spot birds on it.  And I did!  Many American robins were scattered across it and a small, mixed group of purple grackles and red-winged blackbirds were on it.  All those handsome birds were there to ingest invertebrates they found in the turned-over soil.  

     Sometimes in March, I look for flocks of attractive robins and grackles on lawns in southeastern Pennsylvania.  Those birds are exciting, obvious symbols of spring I look forward to seeing every year in this area.  But when I don't see those species on lawns at that time, I look for their gatherings in farmland, specifically in plowed fields and around puddles in short-grass pastures.  Those are human-made habitats where earthworms and other invertebrates are exposed to birds who will eat them.

     Plows turn the soil over, exposing invertebrates to flocks of several kinds of pretty birds, including migrant robins, grackles, red-wings and water pipits, and resident starlings, killdeer plovers and horned larks.  These birds regularly settle on plowed fields in spring to consume invertebrates exposed by plows.  

     The robins, killdeer, larks and pipits are camouflaged on plowed fields, making them hard to see until they move or fly.  Binoculars are often needed to spot them.  

     Occasionally, flocks of stately ring-billed gulls swoop down to plowed fields to dine on exposed invertebrates.  Many of those gulls drop into furrows behind the plows to get food.  And it is interesting to see these gulls "pinwheel" over each other in those furrows to grab invertebrates in their beaks right behind the plows.

     After rain and melting snow in March, some short-grass meadows are pocked here and there with shallow puddles.  Earthworms and other kinds of invertebrates in soil under those pasture pools emerge onto the soil's surface to avoid drowning.  Several kinds of birds frequent those puddles to consume invertebrates coming out of the soil.  Those species again include robins, grackles, red-wings, starlings, killdeer and pipits, plus the beautiful Wilson's snipe, which is a kind of inland sandpiper, and striking mallard ducks.  All these birds wade in inch-deep water in those puddles and move along the pools' edges to snare invertebrates with their beaks.  But snipe poke their long bills into mud under the water to pull food out and mallards shovel up little critters, plus loose vegetation, to eat.

     Interestingly, resident Cooper's hawks, and American kestrels, merlins and elegant peregrines, all members of the swiftly-flying falcon family, feed mostly on birds, including species feeding in farmland.  Falcons migrate through southeastern Pennsylvania in March and, no doubt, catch and eat some farmland birds along the way, including grackles, starlings and other species.  

     Plowed fields and flooded pastures are human-made niches that provide birds with exposed, tiny creatures that are easy to catch.  Some of the works of humans benefit many kinds of wildlife, everywhere, through the years.    


  

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