Harriers in the Afternoon

About a half hour’s drive from the house there’s a hill on which most of the cropland on three adjoining farms has been retired. Now the acreage that had been in row crops is growing grass and forbs like goldenrod and milkweed. Some of the grassland is mowed for hay, some is well managed as pasture for beef cattle and some is left as grassland. That grassland covers about 500 acres, including a few acres of corn stubble.

One very warm winter afternoon with some light drizzle and mist in the air we drove out to see if there were any short-eared owls spending the winter in the grassland. Those uncommon owls often hunt their prey in daylight on days such as this. For the last few years both short-eared owls and harriers have spent the winter at these grasslands where they feed on small rodents. The mice and voles are pursued day and night by the owls and hawks, ravens, red fox and eastern coyotes – the little rodents get no rest. 

The fields that the birds frequent straddle a ridge that's crossed by a sparse fencerow as can be seen in aerial photos – 

On the side of the hill is a road that has a wide spot where we park to photograph the owls. We’d not been there long before a male harrier appeared, his light gray standing out against the shaded hillside across the valley –

He made a couple of passes over the fields but now much closer to the ground –

It wasn’t long before he vanished over the hill, not to reappear.

After a long wait a brown female or immature harrier made an appearance, slowly making a few passes over the field, occasionally swooping down, but never coming up with a meal –

Then another female/immature flew right over us to join the first in flying low over the field –

When they too went over the hill and didn’t return we left to head for home and supper. But we'll be back to what I've come to call "Harrier Hill".

Wetland Restoration/Enlargement

The importance of wetlands is finally being acknowledged, unfortunately not by everyone. Wetlands improve water quality by filtering overland flow and capturing pollutants, help reduce flooding by temporarily storing water, recharge groundwater and provide vitally needed habitat for wildlife.

Pennsylvania is estimated to have lost 28,000 acres of wetland between 1956 and 1979 a period when the U. S. Department of Agriculture actively encouraged drainage. The state now has a policy of “no net loss” of wetlands and there is funding available to restore and create wetlands.

In 2000 my office obtained funding to restore wetlands in a small drainage where there had been beaver ponds over a hundred years before. Here’s the process in scans of old slides (unfortunately some are not good) –

Closer to home, along the river there’s a large wetland that has developed over hundreds of years in an old river channel. That large wetland had a number of smaller outlying ephemeral wetlands which had been drained, plowed and planted to agricultural crops over the last several hundred years.

The large wetland and adjacent fields are now in public ownership; most of the old fields were planted in grasses and forbs to recreate the meadows that had once occupied much of the river’s floodplain.

In 2024 funding was obtained to restore and enlarge some of the smaller wetlands that had been destroyed by agricultural use –

Heavy equipment was brought in and work began –

The bottoms of what would become wetland were left “lumpy/bumpy” to create microhabitats –

Finally, those big piles of soil that had been removed were smoothed and seeded –

In the midst of an otherwise very dry summer several inches of rain fell and the new wetlands began to fill –

It was only a matter of days until wetland vegetation had begun to regrow and wetland dependent species were using the area –

Now Pennsylvania has a few more acres of wetland, downstream communities will see a bit less flooding, wildlife will have more space to live and we naturalists have another place to wander and see mammals, birds, dragonflies and other wetland wildlife. 

Day by Day Throughout the Year - 4th Quarter

October is the middle of fall, a season of green turning to bright yellows, oranges and reds with a few pinks and purples mixed in and then gradually fading to drab grays and browns in November. The year’s fourth quarter can begin with summer-like temperatures and end with deep snow in December. It’s one of many things we like about living in northeastern North America – as has been said, variety is the spice of life.

The photographs from the first three quarters of the year can be seen here, here  and here. The year’s fourth quarter doesn’t correlate to a particular season since fall begins on September 1 and winter begins with December, before the fourth quarter ends. This series, as the other photo-a-day-for-a-year series that preceded it, was inspired by a similar project undertaken by a well-known nature photographer.

Here are the day-by-day photos from each day of the year’s fourth quarter, hopefully you’ll enjoy viewing them as much as I enjoyed taking them –

                                            

 

In northcentral Pennsylvania it used to be unheard of for there to be active butterflies and salamanders in November, but on the 5th I saw three different species of butterflies in the air, on the 6th, under a short piece of a log, five active red-backed salamanders and on the 21st an eastern garter snake basking in the sun. The first snow flakes fell at the house on November 22, a month later than was normal 50 years ago. If you don't believe in human-caused climate change I have a bridge to sell you.

So here we are at the end of one year and the beginning of another, what will the new year bring? The weather is becoming more erratic, bird populations are in decline, more and more invasive introduced species are becoming established, the sixth great extinction is underway – things are not good in the natural world.

However, there are still beautiful things and processes to see, study and photograph. I’ll be out in the natural world, camera in hand and still be here posting weekly. Hopefully you've enjoyed viewing these photographs, and that they've piqued your interest in what's out there in forest and field.

Take a look at the wide natural world around you, the flowers and trees, the birds and bugs, the wind and rain and sunny days, it's worth protecting and will be if we each do whatever we can to save what's left.