One day late in May of 2016, I visited three boggy, short-grass cow pastures located within a few miles of each other in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. I wanted to experience the beauties and intrigues of what nature was in them, though at first glance they appeared barren of wildlife because of short grass, few trees and even fewer, or no, strips of shrubbery. But those meadows have mixed patches of cattails and skunk cabbage, plus clumps of sedges and rushes, all in low spots in the meadows. And each one of those pastures has a stream flowing through it and millions of buttercup flowers. I was impressed with their green and yellow beauties.
Cattails and skunk cabbage growing together is interesting in itself. Although they both grow only in constantly moist soil, cattails need full sunlight while skunk cabbage tolerates shade. Skunk cabbage was in those soggy bottomlands first, when they were shaded by deciduous forests. But when trees were cut away to clear the land for farming and meadows, skunk cabbage established in the damp ground adapted to the full sunlight and thrived. Meanwhile cattail seeds blew in on the wind and developed the five foot tall cattail plants, each with a decorative, brown sausage-like seed head on top of each stalk, that colonized the moist soil among the skunk cabbage plants.
Red-winged blackbirds are adapted to nesting among patches of cattails. Red-wings dominate stands of cattails with their numbers, activities and beauties. Males are striking in black feathering and scarlet shoulder patches. They stand on cattail stems, fences and roadside wires to sing "o-ka-lee" several times each day. And they chase away hawks, crows and other would-be predators.
Female red-wings are dark-brown, streaked with beige, which camouflages and protects them from predators. Each female builds a nursery of grasses among a few stalks of cattails a couple of feet above the ground or water level of a wetland, including in boggy pastures.
Grassy pastures were created along waterways to provide food and water for cattle, horses and other farm animals. When I visited those three meadows toward the end of May, the stream in each one was partly choked with water cress, a plant originally from Europe. I saw at least one brood of mallard ducklings and their mom in each waterway and muskrat droppings on rocks in the waterways and on the muddy shorelines. Depositing droppings in strategic places is how muskrats mark their territories.
I saw a killdeer plover, which is a kind of inland shorebird, along the edge of one stream. Probably its mate was setting on a clutch of four eggs somewhere nearby in the pasture. A pair of spotted sandpipers, another kind of inland shorebird, should have been along each waterway in the cow pastures, but I didn't see any while I was at each one. But with the grass and other vegetation, these small, camouflaged birds are hard to see at best, which is good for them. Both these kinds of shorebirds feed on invertebrates they find in water, mud and short vegetation.
Several barn swallows and a few tree swallows dashed over each set of meadows and waterways in their pursuit of flying insects to eat. And there are purple martins, another kind of swallow, at one meadow because of a nearby, farmyard colony of them. These three species of swallows, and others, are always entertaining when in flight.
Barn swallows build mud pellet nests on support beams in barns while martins hatch young in high apartment bird houses on farmyard lawns. Tree swallows rear offspring in tree cavities and bird boxes erected for them. With few trees in cropland, tree swallows almost wholly depend on bird boxes to raise chicks in.
A pair of eastern kingbirds was at each of the three pastures I visited. They perch on tree twigs and fences to watch for passing flying insects. When a victim comes near, each kingbird zips out from its perch, grabs the bug in its beak and flies back to its perch to eat its prey. Each pair of kingbirds builds a nursery in a fork of twigs in a lone tree in a meadow.
There were a few other kinds of critters at each of these three meadows. Green darners, which are a kind of dragonfly, zoomed over all three sets of waterways and pastures after flying insects to eat, and mates. Those big dragonflies are entertaining to watch and are not harmful to people. In fact, they eat a lot of mosquitoes and other pesky insects.
I heard several male green frogs croaking and belching from one shallow, sluggish stream in one pasture. Their guttural vocalizations, as with all types of frogs and toads, are unchanged since the long ago age of amphibians. They are a blast from the distant past when amphibians dominated. And like all other frogs and toads, green frogs consume a variety of invertebrates.
And I saw a belted kingfisher and a couple of snapping turtles in the largest stream in one of the three meadows. The kingfisher dived from the air into the stream to catch a minnow. And I could see the snappers moving about with only the tops of their shells and their noses and eyes visible above the water line. They were looking for fish, ducklings and anything else to eat.
Those plants and animals I mentioned will continue living along those streams in cow pastures through most of the summer. They may not always be noticeable at first, but with time and perseverance, some of them should be spotted by anyone who looks for them. And so it is in habitats near readers' homes.
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