Life Generally Overlooked

     On the afternoon of August 25, 2015, I stopped at a tiny shallow tributary of Mill Creek in a sunny meadow about a mile south of New Holland, Pennsylvania to see what wildlife was visible.  This little trib of clear water also receives cleaned-up waste water from a food processing plant, which might make that waterway more of a challenge for wildlife to live in.  But over the years, I have seen a variety of aquatic plants and creatures thriving in it and that day in August was no exception.
     That little brook seemed devoid of animal life when I first arrived, but I knew better than to give up.  Within seconds I saw schools of light-brown banded killifish, a minnow-like species, in the inches-deep, clear waterway.  Actually, I saw their dark shadows on the muddy bottom of the stream before the fish themselves because they were camouflaged brown above brown, which protects them from herons, kingfishers and other predators on fish.   These small fish are also vertically striped, which helps them blend into their austere surroundings
     Killifish are long, and thin, streamlined for life in a waterway's current.  They are adapted to warmer waters with mud bottoms.  They feed on bits of plant and animal debris and small invertebrates in the water and on its surface.  And these particular killifish prove that the waste water from the plant is cleansed before it is released into Mill Creek.
     By scanning my 16 power binoculars along the tiny, mud shores of the waterway and the grass, sedges and blooming arrowhead plants growing from the shallow water, I saw several male bluet damselflies, singly and in gatherings of several per group.  Since I couldn't see their transparent wings, they looked like one-and-a-half long, horizontal blue streaks with black rings perched on the waterside vegetation or hovering like tiny, blue helicopters low over the water.  And each one of a few males held a pale-gray female behind her head by the tip of his long, thin abdomen in a spawning embrace as each female deposited eggs in the shallows.  There probably were several more female damselflies along that little brook, but being gray and small, they were difficult to see for their own safety.  I didn't notice many of them.
      In many species of wildlife, males are show-offs with bright colors or sounds to attract females to them for mating, and to intimidate other males into getting out of their breeding areas.  And the attractive male bluet damselflies are blue and black-marked for that reason.    
     The resulting damselfly nymphs from the spawning are thin, brown, and predatory on tiny invertebrates on the muddy bottom of this tributary of Mill Creek.  But within a year, those nymphs change to adults with wings, crawl out of the water and look for flying insects to eat and mates.
     Several least skippers, a kind of small butterfly, flitted among the grasses and sedges growing on the muddy edges of this little waterway.  Their pretty wings were pale-yellow, edged with brown.  The ones I saw might have been females ready to lay eggs on the grasses and sedges, their young 's only food.
     Several sulphur yellow butterflies puddled in the mud on the shore of this brook.  Usually sipping nectar from flowers, as most butterflies do, this species of butterfly, as with many of their kin, get water, salt and minerals from mud, wherever it may be.
     No matter how small or seemingly insignificant a species may seem, all life is beautiful and important.  All habitats, including human-made ones, no matter how small, harbor interesting life.  Some of the most intriguing life is generally overlooked.