MID-SUMMER CREEK LIFE

     For an hour and a half, in the middle of June of this year, I visited a 200 yard, slow moving, stretch of a Lancaster County, Pennsylvania creek to look for wildlife.  I've stopped there in summer before over the years to experience wild creatures, and saw a few elegant white-tailed deer, mink, muskrats, appealing wood duck families, basking painted turtles and fishing belted kingfishers, to name a few kinds.  Creeks in farmland, such as this one, are oases of water, and creekside thickets of tall weeds and grasses, shrubbery and trees; places where wildlife finds shelter and food, without interference from plowing, sowing, and harvesting crops.  

     During that hour and a half visit, I saw some of the same interesting wild animal species I've seen before along that part of the creek.  I experienced over a dozen airborne rough-winged swallows, a few nesting red-winged blackbirds, a few pairs of gray catbirds, several croaking male green frogs and a pair each of Baltimore orioles and cedar waxwings.  Those species of creatures are there because their preferred niches are there, as they are along other waterways in this area.  

     A thirty yard wide, lush, green jungle of vegetation covers the floodplain along the waterway I visit.  Trees there include ash-leafed and silver maples, black walnuts, green ashes and mulberries.  Shrubbery includes red-twigged dogwoods and elderberries.  Poison ivy and Virginia creeper vines climb the trees and bushes.  Plants on the moist ground under the trees include lots of skunk cabbage, two kinds of jewelweeds and stinging nettles.  Reed canary-grass is abundant in open, sunny parts of the floodplain.

     Every year, a few pairs of rough-winged swallows hatch young in unused drainage holes in a cement retaining wall along the creek.  Rough-wings traditionally nest in holes they dig in streambanks or use abandoned kingfisher holes in the same streamside niche.  But these swallows are adaptable and many pairs raise babies in human-made drainage holes.  These swallows, like all their kin, swiftly and gracefully skim the skies near their nurseries to catch flying insects.

     A few pairs of red-winged blackbirds raise young in the tiny meadow of high reed canary-grass.  The black males, that have red shoulder patches, are picturesque singing from wind-swayed grass stems.  Females anchor their grassy cradles to grass stems above the ground and both parents feed a variety of invertebrates to the chicks.      

     One or two hen wood ducks hatch ducklings in tree hollows along this creek.  A day after they hatch, the ducklings jump from their nursery and land on water or ground below.  Cute and fluffy, they follow their mother and search for invertebrate food on water, and plants on the ground.

     Northern cardinals, song sparrows and gray catbirds lurk, feed and raise young in streamside thickets.  Song sparrows get much of their invertebrate food from the narrow, muddy edges of the creek, playing the role of sandpipers in that niche.  Gray as the shadows they skulk in, catbirds feed invertebrates to their young in twig and grass cradles saddled on twigs in shrubbery.

     One or two pairs each of Baltimore orioles and cedar waxwings rear offspring in cradles in the trees.  The beautiful oriole females build deep, wind-swayed pouches of twigs and vines fastened to an outer twig high in a tree.  Both species eat invertebrates from among those trees, the waxwings often winging out to catch their prey in mid-air.

     Waterways in farmland are oases of habitats that shelter several forms of wildlife.  Floodplain and water creatures and plants are always a joy to experience along the waterway.