SUMMERING RETENTION BASIN WILDLIFE

     For an hour in the middle of June of this year, I visited a four-acre retention basin, surrounded by a ten-acre lawn, to see what wildlife species was using that basin.  This four year old, human-made basin of shallow water in Lancaster County is abundantly pocked with dense stands of cattails, reeds and reed canary-grass, all of which are tall and shelter and feed the adaptable wildlife in that basin. 

     Red-winged blackbirds dominated that basin with their numbers, activities and voices.  They were there to nest among the high cattails and grasses.  Several striking male red-wings, with their black feathering and red shoulder patches, repeatedly sang "kon-ga-reeeee" from the wind-swayed vegetation.  Those beautiful males also chased each other, and some of the females, around the basin, creating much interesting activity, and, again, showing off those lovely, scarlet shoulder epaulets.         

     In May, the lovely female red-wings built cradles of cattails and grass, and anchored them to stalks of the same tall plants, above the normal waterline.  In June, both genders of red-wings were feeding invertebrates to their young in their concealed nurseries, and after they fledged and scattered among the high vegetation.

     A pair each of mallard ducks and Canada geese raised young in that basin where the ducklings fed on invertebrates and the goslings consumed grass and other vegetation.  Both mother waterfowl hatched their young on the ground under the dense and high plant life on tiny islands in the basin.  Both broods of youngsters were half-grown when I saw them in June, resting on short grass on one of those islands.

     A family of handsome killdeer plovers walked about on a small patch of bare mud in their search for invertebrates in that mud and surrounding shallow water.  The fluffy young hatched on bare ground on one of those tiny islands.  

     A beautiful and elegant adult green heron landed in the shallows near a patch of cattails.  It came to the basin to catch some of the many green frogs I could hear croaking, and their tadpoles of last year.  It stalked carefully, occasionally thrusting out its long neck and beak to catch a victim.  No doubt this heron had young to feed in a stick nursery in a nearby tree.

     I saw a sleek-furred muskrat swimming across the basin and disappear among a stand of cattails.  Muskrats pile cattails and grass in shallow, still water to create a home.  Females raise young in their haycock homes.  Muskrats also ingest grass and cattail roots.

     That built retention basin, and many others like it in the United States, is home to a variety of adaptable wildlife, if the vegetation is not mowed.  I'm sure more critters than I saw in that hour are in that retention basin.  All those creatures, whether I saw them or not, have additional homes to raise young and we have more places to enjoy experiencing the wildlife that has a future because it can adjust to changing habitats, even human-made ones.  

                  


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