Interesting Mud Puddles

     Muddy puddles form during heavy or prolonged summer rain along roadsides and in bare-ground fields.  They reflect the sky and surrounding vegetation, and are rippled by the wind.  And although they are of no concern to most of us, some puddles are interesting because they are the site of various interesting animal activities.
     Several kinds of critters come to the puddles to drink, as their tracks in the mud testify.  Some more recognizable foot prints around small pools of rainwater in fields and along roadsides are made by raccoons with their five long toes on each foot, the tracks of opossums that have a thumb-like toe on each back foot and the two-toed prints of white-tailed deer.   
     Long, meandering marks in the mud were made by earthworms that came to the surface of the soil at night when they are protected by darkness.  Because they would die if they were to dry, rain brings them out of the ground to look for mates for breeding.  Then they descend into the soil to avoid the drying sunlight, and hungry birds and other animals the next day. 
     A variety of small birds drink and bathe in many rain puddles.  One can see their four-toed tracks, three toes in front and one in back, in the mud around those small pools.  Each bird dips its head into the water, flutters its wings and splashes the water about.  After bathing, the birds leave the tiny pool and preen their feathers, aligning them so they will insulate the birds and allow them to fly. 
     Certain adaptable creatures, including American toads, box turtles, raccoons, opossums, purple grackles, American robins, American crows and European starlings eat earthworms and other hapless invertebrates that drowned in the little pools.  All these animals leave tracks in the mud as proof they were there.  And one can read those tracks to understand what those critters were doing.    
     Early in May, American robins, purple grackles, barn swallows and certain other kinds of birds visit some mud puddles to pick up little blobs of mud with their beaks and fly it, bit by bit, to their nest sites to build nurseries for their offspring.  Robins make a bowl-like shell of mud on a foundation of grass and tiny twigs in the twiggy crotches of trees and shrubs.  Then they place fine grass inside the mud shell, on which they lay their three or four blue eggs per cradle.
     Barn swallows make open cups of mud pellets they plaster to support beams in barns and under small bridges.  Those barns and bridges protect young swallows from weather and most predators.x
     Pairs of American toads spawn thousands of black eggs in clear, gelatinous strings on the bottoms of some roadside puddles during April.  The black tads eat decaying plants and animals in the water and are pitched in a battle against time; to develop legs and lungs and escape those little pools before they completely dry.  Tadpoles win the struggle some years, but not in drier ones.  
     A variety of butterflies, particularly cabbage whites, tiger swallowtails and other kinds, gather at mud puddles to sip the water and consume salt and minerals from the wet soil.  That process is called puddling.  Sometimes there is a score or more of butterflies of a few kinds at a roadside puddle.  Usually they fly up as a group at the passing of a vehicle or pedestrian, but quickly return to the mud and continue ingesting water and minerals. 
     Female mosquitos lay eggs in some temporary, roadside pools.  The larvae feed on algae and detritus floating in the water.  But like the toad tadpoles, those wrigglers are pitched in a race against the puddle drying before they are able to leave the water for life in the air.
     Look closer at rain puddles in bare-ground fields and along roadsides.  They are more interesting than most people think with the animal life in and around them, during the day and at night.