Creek Shallows and Flats

     On June 16, 2015, I went to the deciduous woods along Hammer Creek in northern Lancaster County, Pennsylvania to see nesting woodland birds.  Unfortunately, I was only there from about 11:00 am to 1:00 pm, a poor time of day to be looking for birds I admit.  I saw some bird species, but I became more interested in a 20 yard long strip of narrow mud flat and shallow water along the edge of that clear-water creek in the woods because of the small critters I saw along it.
     The flats had a few small, living grasses and dead twigs on them and the shallow water had a thick growth of anacharis, a kind of aquatic plant.  Those two tiny habitats were under a canopy of tall trees, shrubbery and other kinds of plants, including skunk cabbage and jewelweed.
     Several striking male black-winged damselflies were the first small creatures I noticed on the flats and the water vegetation in the shallows.  One second they were metallic blue and the next they were iridescent green as the sunlight bounced off them as they moved about.  When I looked at them with 16 power binoculars, I also saw a few female black-wings with the tips of their abdomens in the water among the aquatic plants.  Those females were spawning scores of eggs, while a male or two seemingly were guarding each one of them.  When the larvae hatch, they will slip under stones, limbs and other objects on the bottom of the stream and feed on tiny, water insects until those young damselflies change to adults in about a year and emerge into the air to reproduce.
     Tiny black-nosed dace fry swarmed in inch-deep water between the aquatic vegetation and the mud flats.  The parents of these little minnows spawned eggs among those water plants in the shallows toward the end of May.  The young fish recently hatched and made their way to the inch-deep water behind the water vegetation for their own safety from larger fish in the creek.  However, some of those juvenile dace could fall prey to young northern water snakes and other, smaller, predators that lurk in the waterway.      
     Interestingly, I could see those tiny fish only when the sun was shining.  Actually, I could see the shadows of the fish on the brown-mud bottom rather than the brown, little critters themselves.  When the sun was curtained by clouds, the fish disappeared before my eyes.    
     Several flies of some kind walked about on the mud of the mud flat along this creek in the woods.  They probably were ingesting moisture and nutrients from the mud.  And they would be prey for the damselflies, and maybe a few kinds of birds, as well.   
     A few small butterflies of a couple different kinds were on the flats as well.  They were taking in moisture and minerals from the mud, minerals they can't get from flower nectar. 
     I heard a couple of romantic male green frogs groaning and gulping along the shore of the creek.  They would be sitting on the flats or in the shallows waiting for mates to spawn with, and the flies and other invertebrates to go by close enough that they could grab those critters with their long, frog tongues.  Some of the frogs, in turn, could be food for night-prowling raccoons and mink.
     And once that day I saw a Louisiana waterthrush, a kind of small bird that patrols the shores of woodland waterways for invertebrates, such as those flies on the flats, to eat and feed their young.  And, as is the habit of this species, the waterthrush danced and bobbed as it walked, as if listening to music from tiny earphones.      
     All these creatures exist, in part, because of thin mud flats and small shallows of water along a waterway's banks.  Like beauty, life is where you find it.