WINDOW TO A STREAM

     During summer, I occasionally visit a 24-foot-wide "window" in thickets of lush, green trees, shrubbery and vines to view a stream, and thickets behind that shallow, clear-running waterway in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  Seeing wildlife in the air, on the stream or in the water passing by that window intrigued me the most.  Some creatures that passed by on the water first came through green tunnels of leafy limbs hanging over the waterway from both banks. 

     Early in summer, I see several black-winged damselflies, either sitting on vegetation hanging over the water, or flying over the stream after insect prey or mates.  Males have four, black wings and slender, metallic-green abdomens that shine in sunlight.  These damselflies spawn into the waterway they came from themselves.  

     A family of mallard ducks occasionally paddled past the window.  A couple times a black and orange male Baltimore oriole flashed through the air and over the stream from one green thicket to another.  

     Through that window in the thickets, I've sometimes noticed a brown and dark-streaked song sparrow drop to the muddy shoreline of the waterway to eat seeds and invertebrates.  Those sparrows were camouflaged on the mud, making them hard to spot.

     Sometimes, too, I saw little groups of American goldfinches flutter to the shallows along the stream edges where they consumed strands of algae.  The yellow and black males were always striking in the shade under thickets growing right to the water's edge.  

     I saw small schools of steam-lined banded killifish facing into the current as they watched for invertebrates to ingest.  These little fish are so well camouflaged that I often see their shadows on the stone or mud bottom before I spot the fish themselves.   

     I always see a few each of sunfish, large-mouth bass, carp and white suckers from that window in the thickets.  Sometimes the fish rest on the bottom, where they are still and difficult to see.  Other times, these fish swim upstream or downstream by my observation window as they navigate under the green-leafed arches overhead.  Carp power by my lookout, stirring mud as they grope for food.  Suckers are interesting to watch sucking invertebrates from bottom mud with their down-turned mouths.   

     All these fish are hardy, and adapted to waterways and impoundments.  And they are preyed on by herons, belted kingfishers, mink and other predators.

     In June and July I hear male green frogs belching and gulping from muddy streambanks, but I don't always see them, even with binocular help.  Some frogs are probably eaten by herons and raccoons. 

     Sometimes I see the heads of predatory snapping turtles, painted turtles and northern water snakes poking through shoreline mats of algae and duckweed.  And, occasionally, I see a snapper walking on the bottom of the stream, or a snake swimming from shore to shore, by my observation window and out of sight.

     Once in a while, I see a muskrat swimming by my window, and gone.  These cattail and grass-eating rodents live in burrows they dig themselves in streambanks.  Each tunnel begins at the normal water level and slants up to the grassroots level where they live well above the water line.

     My little "hole" in lush, green thickets gives me interesting views of what is happening along a small section of a stream, and in the thickets surrounding it.  And it gives me an idea of what creatures go by it as if on a highway to somewhere.