LIFE ON A GOLF COURSE

     We stayed a few days in a motel bordering a golf course in the peaceful country of the beautiful Shenandoah Valley near staunton, Virginia.  Of course the golf course landscape was carpeted by regularly mowed grass, studded with rows of planted white pine trees, and sported a quarter-acre pond, partly flanked with thickets of young trees, shrubbery, vines and weeds, all of which I could see from our second story motel room.  The thickets partly-shrouding the pond were the only real wildlife habitat on the golf course, but I wanted to experience what adaptable creatures could live on a golf course. 

     When I could, I sat by the window of our motel room with a 16 power pair of binoculars and watched for wildlife on the neighboring golf course, which was no wildlife sanctuary.  But I was curious to know what wildlife could live on that mostly manicured, human-made habitat, and other golf courses like it.  

     About twelve stately Canada geese in a group were the first wildlife I saw on the golf course from our window.  They grazed on the grass, a little like sheep would, moving along slowly as they fed.  When full, the geese walked to the pond and rested peacefully, while preening their feathers, bathing and socializing.

     Occasionally, a few each of American crows and American robins moved over the grass in their quest for invertebrates to ingest.  Those adaptable species helped add life to what seemed to be a dull habitat. 

     Just before sunset, one evening, I saw a few each cottontail rabbits and elegant white-tailed deer slip from the dense thickets around the pond and onto the grassy lawn.  There both species nibbled grass, but stayed close to the sheltering thickets to avoid possible danger.  I thought wood chucks, striped skunks and red foxes should dwell among those thickets as well.   But I didn't see any.

     I scanned the thickets with my binoculars to see small birds sheltering in them.  I did see a couple each of brown thrashers and northern mockingbirds fluttering about in the thickets.  And, although I didn't see any, I'm sure gray catbirds and northern cardinals could well have been living in those same thickets surrounding the pond.

     I also saw a few mourning doves and house finches in the thickets, among the pines and around the motel.  The adaptable doves and finches probably were nesting in the pines and feeding on weed seeds around the pond.       

     Although I didn't see any in the short time I was there, other possible critters at the pond could have been dragonflies, green and/or bull frogs, raccoons that would prey on the frogs and muskrats that would eat aquatic vegetation and live in shelters of piled-up plants they make in shallow water.  All those creatures would help add more interesting life to the pond, and the golf course.

     One of innumerable golf courses in the United States, this was not a wildlife oasis.  But it is home to a variety of adaptable species that increase their living space and populations, and we get to enjoy their presence where we might not think they would exist at all.      

     

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TWO GULLS AND A TERN

     Via a live camera and our computer screen, I saw flocks of post-breeding ring-billed gulls, Franklin's gulls and Caspian terns resting together, in early autumn of 2021, on mud flats and in inch-deep water on Lake Onalaska, a large, shallow back-water off the Mississippi River in northern Wisconsin.  These attractive birds are noted for regularly flocking together because they share inland, large-water habitats for nesting and wintering, and scavenge and catch fish and other aquatic creatures.  But each species also has lifestyles of its own, which sets it apart.             All these handsome, easily-seen species are graceful, buoyant fliers, quite adaptable and common across much of North America.  They are interesting to watch going about their daily activities, including nesting, getting food and loafing in big gatherings on rivers and larger lakes.      Ring-billed gulls, so-named for a black ring ...
Read more

MATS OF WATER PLANTS

     By August, varying-sized, green mats of algae, duckweed and water stargrass float together on the surfaces of certain ponds and still backwaters of creeks in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  Algae grows in long, matted strands, and duckweeds are tiny, flat plants that grow in colonies on water surfaces.  Stargrass colonies root in muddy bottoms.  Each plant's long leaves undulate in currents and the single yellow flower barely emerges from the water's surface to be pollinated.       Together, those mats of algae, duckweed, and stargrass in bloom, look like tiny islands in the water, and remind me of lawns with dandelion flowers flourishing in them.  And, those mats of small, aquatic plants create niches that several kinds of small creatures use for a variety of reasons.      Certain kinds of attractive and entertaining damselflies and dragonflies rest on those mats, after aerial feeding forays on small, flying in...
Read more

WINTERING BIRDS ALONG STREAMS

      Four kinds of mostly-brown, small birds, including permanent resident song sparrows and killdeer plovers, and wintering Wilson's snipe and American pipits, winter regularly, but sparingly, along streams and brooks in southeastern Pennsylvania farmland meadows.  But, being beautifully camouflaged on mud flats, gravel bars and shallows on the shores of those small waterways, these adaptable, interesting birds are nearly impossible to see, until they move or fly, and then they are quick to duck out of sight on brown flats and gravel bars, and among tufts of vegetation along shorelines.       In winter, all these birds ingest invertebrates from waterway shorelines where the running water doesn't freeze and thaws the flats and bars it laps over.  Each bird species snares invertebrates in its own way.  (Song sparrows also consume weed and grass seeds.)  The sparrows, killdeer and pipits pick up invertebrates from the surfaces of the...
Read more