AN OVERGROWN DITCH

     Occasionally I visit an overgrown storm water drainage ditch near home in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania to see what wild plants and creatures inhabit it.  A row of young red juniper trees were planted between that ditch and a blacktop parking lot.  Those junipers shelter birds such as northern mockingbirds, American robins and the like.  And the junipers' pretty, pale-blue, berry-like cones are eaten by mockers, robins, starlings, cedar waxwings and other kinds of berry-eating birds in fall and winter.  A mockingbird is usually among those junipers the year around.    

     That ditch is about thirty yards long and ten yards wide.  It is one of many hundreds of little, abandoned back areas in this area that become tiny wildlife habitats, and examples of nature healing itself after human activities destroyed the original habitats and then deserted them.  Several kinds of plants pioneered this ditch and made into a bit of a wildlife refuge, as well as those plants holding down the soil.

     A little patch of cattails, with their brown, picturesque seed heads swaying in the wind, inhabits the lowest, wettest part of that ditch.  American goldfinches and other kinds of birds gather cattail seed fluff to use in constructing their pretty, dainty nurseries.

     Spotted jewelweeds with their orange, cornucopia-shaped blooms and smartweeds with their tiny, round, pink flowers in late summer sprouted in the more moist soil in the ditch.  When their seeds are mature, touching jewelweed seed pods causes them to explode, shooting the dark seeds at least a few feet. Some of those seeds are eaten by mice and sparrows and finches.  At least one or two song sparrows already live permanently in this drainage ditch.

     Common milkweeds, dogbane, Queen-Anne's-lace, Canada goldenrod and white asters, in that order of blooming, live in the higher, drier parts of the ditch.  These plants annually produce lovely flowers that bees, butterflies and other kinds of insects visit to sip nectar and ingest pollen.  And later, these pollinated blooms produce seeds that feed mice, sparrows and finches.  

     Pokeweed, and bittersweet nightshade and wild grape vines that crawl up other plants in this ditch, produce soft fruit by late summer, some of which are eaten by mice and berry-eating birds.  Those plants grew from seeds in bird droppings when birds were perched on tall grasses and weeds in that ditch.  A mockingbird already lives permanently in that ditch full of berries and invertebrates to eat.  

     Multiflora rose bushes and poison ivy vines in this ditch produce hard, red berries and white berries, respectively, by late summer.  Those shrubs and vines also offer shelter for wildlife, and berries to eat through winter.

     Mulberry, choke cherry and crab apple trees in this ditch produce fruit during June, August and September respectively.  When these trees become older, and larger, some of them will have cavities that will shelter certain kinds of wildlife, including gray squirrels, screech owls and American kestrels.

     This drainage ditch, and many other small, overgrown habitats in this area, if left alone, will feed and harbor adaptable flowering plants, fruiting plants and wild critters, including striped skunks, opossums, wood chucks, cottontail rabbits, red foxes, coyotes, several kinds of birds and other species.  All that adaptable life is interesting to experience in their overgrown, little habitats.