Salamander Strategies

     Salamanders are amphibians, as are frogs and toads.  Amphibian is a Greek word that means "two lives" which frogs, toads and many kinds of salamanders have; one in water and the other on land.
     Salamanders have four strategies for survival.  Some species, including hellbenders, mud puppies, blind cave salamanders and sirens, live in water all their lives.  Other salamander species are aquatic when young and terrestrial as adults, which defines mole salamanders.  Newts start life in water, live on land for a year or more, then return to water as adults, where they spend the rest of their lives.  And there are salamander species that live all their lives on damp ground under logs, rocks and fallen leaves on forest floors.
     All salamanders are predators, consuming a variety of invertebrates, whether in water or on land.  And most species of them are camouflaged for safety in their respective habitats.
     Mole salamanders have the most typical amphibian lifestyle.  They start life as larvae in puddles of water, change to adults with lungs for life on land, and return to water only to spawn.  They are called mole salamanders because of their adult life of tunneling through fallen leaves and moist soil on woodland floors. 
     Adult spotted salamanders are the most common and widespread of their family in northeastern North America.  They are about six inches long, black and have two rows of orange or yellow spots down their top sides from head to tail.
     During the first warm rains in February or early in March in southeastern Pennsylvania, male and female spotted salamanders emerge from dormancy in the soil under carpets of fallen leaves and march to pools on forest floors to spawn eggs in white, gelatin-like,m protective clusters.  When done spawning, they quickly retreat back under blankets of dropped leaves before cold weather returns.  Their young are left to hatch, feed themselves and develop lungs for life on land.       
     Eastern spotted newts start life in ponds.  After a few months they become orange salamanders, with black-circled red dots, and live on forest floors for one or two years.  Then they are visible during rains and called red efts.
     Perhaps, long ago, somewhere, red efts couldn't compete with other land salamanders for food and shelter.  And maybe there was a niche open in shallow, fresh water at that time.  The efts changed their bodies and lifestyle to again live in water as reproducing adults.  Adult eastern newts are olive above with red spots and yellow below with black dots.  The olive allows them to blend into their watery habitat. 
     Red-backed and slimy salamanders are abundant species in the lungless family of salamanders that live totally on moist soil under rocks, logs and carpets of fallen leaves on woodland floors.  Females of these two species lay a dozen or more eggs in a cluster under damp, protective logs and leaves on the ground and guard their progeny until they hatch.  The young hatch on land as miniature replicas of their parents.  These salamanders, obviously, do not have aquatic egg or larval stages in their life histories.  
     Because they don't need to spawn in water, and fields, roads and other human constructions create woodland islands, new species of salamanders may be forming as I write about them.  Isolated communities of salamanders will have no new genes coming into or leaving them.  Therefore, any favorable quirk in a genetic code will stay within its community and a new species will develop.
     And it could be that these totally land salamanders will sometime in the future spawn eggs with shells that retain moisture, pushing those salamanders into being more lizard-like in that respect.  But lungless salamanders will also have to genetically develop lungs because they now "breathe" through their moist skins and throat linings that lose a lot of moisture, drying the salamanders to death in dry habitats.  And lungless salamanders' skins must always be moist so they can breathe at all.
     These are strategies some salamander species have for survival.  Those techniques for life make those amphibians quite interesting.     

Waste Water Critters

     On July 24, this past, I spent another hour at my favorite waste water outlet that flows into a brook in a cow pasture in farmland about a mile south of New Holland, Pennsylvania.  The weather was warm and sunny that day and the treated waste water was crystal clear, allowing me to see through the shallow, running water to the waterway's stony bottom.  Grass lined most of the stream's shoreline and emerged from the shallows where arrowhead plants had white blossoms.  Arrowhead is named for its arrowhead-shaped leaves.
     Mixed schools of three kinds of small, stream-lined fish, including banded killifish, black-nosed dace and creek chubs swam just enough into the current to hold their positions in the water.  Dace, especially, need good quality water to live.  The beauties of these brownish minnows and their dark shadows on the waterway's bottom among rocks and rooted, aquatic plants, were highlighted by the sunlight, making a lovely, watery scene.
     The chubs were a surprise to me because I never saw them in that waste water before.  Chubs average six inches in length at maturity, and can grow up to ten inches long.  The chubs were at least three times the bulk of the killifish and dace.  Each chub was brownish-gray on top and had a faint, dark line on each flank from the nose to the base of the tail.  A few of those fish had tiny, black dots on their upper surfaces. 
     Creek chubs live in every watershed in the eastern United States, including the Susquehanna River.  They mostly live in running streams and creeks that have some rooted water vegetation on their stony or muddy bottoms.  Chubs often hide in and find aquatic invertebrates among those water plants.
     I have seen minnow predators in this brook of waste water in the past, including one or two each of great blue herons, great egrets, a young snapping turtle, and a few northern water snakes, like the one I saw today undulating across the clear stream.  I was able to see the turtle and the snakes by seeing through their camouflage against the brownish stream bottom.
     I also saw a few kinds of small birds that regularly frequent this waste water brook to get food and drink.  Two pairs of American goldfinches came to its shores to bathe, drink and eat alga from the rocks in the shallows.  I saw a song sparrow hopping across the little mud flats of the shoreline to pick up and consume invertebrates.  I saw one of a family of willow flycatchers that nested in nearby shrubbery along the waterway.  And I saw an immature Baltimore oriole along the shoreline to drink and bathe.  Every year, a few families of Baltimores hatch in pouched cradles in American elm and other kinds of trees near the stream.  The flycatchers catch flying insects while the orioles ingest invertebrates from trees leaves and off the ground.       
     Several each of bluet damselflies and cabbage white butterflies were around the little stream.  The thin, light-blue damsels were spawning eggs into the shallows while the butterflies visited mint blooms to get nectar.
     As an aside from the treated waste water, I saw four turkey vultures feeding on a road-killed raccoon about 50 yards down the road I was on.  There was little traffic on the road, but the vultures lifted off it when a vehicle approached, then dropped again onto the carcass to continue dining.
     And all the while a mixed group of a couple dozen barn swallows, tree swallows, purple martins and chimney swifts swooped and dove after flying insects over the road, meadows and the water.  These agile, small birds, that are soon going to migrate, were entertaining to watch in the air. 
     There is much adaptable, attractive wildlife in and around that constant flow of treated waste water.  And all of it is entertaining, making life more enjoyable. 

Favorite Spiders

     Three kinds of spiders, including black and yellow garden spiders, Carolina wolf spiders and six-spotted fishing spiders, are my favorites.  These interesting species show some of the diversity among spiders in the eastern United States, including here in southeastern Pennsylvania.  I have seen all of them many times and am thrilled with each sighting.
     Female garden spiders' bodies are up to an inch long, not including their legs.  They have short, silvery "hair" on their thoraxes and strikingly beautiful, yellow and black patterns on their abdomens.  But these large, colorful spiders are most famous for their rounded, vertical webs that are over a foot in diameter and placed between tall grass and weed stalks in sunny habitats.  They use those large, silky webs, which are numerous and quite visible, particularly in late summer and early autumn, as nets to snare flying insects of many kinds.
     Those big webs are beautiful, like whimsical works of art, especially during sunrises in late-summer and fall mornings when innumerable droplets of dew reflect the sun's rays, making the webs sparkle like millions of tiny diamonds.  Overgrown fields of these webs are breath-taking.
     A much smaller male garden spider makes his own web in an outlying part of a female's web, and adds that vertical, white band of contorted webbing in the middle of her web.  After the pair mates, the female lays several eggs in a round sac, up to one inch wide, that appears to have a papery cover.  Then she attaches that baby nursery to a side of the web and dies soon afterward.  The young hatch in fall, overwinter in their nursery and emerge the next spring as tiny editions of their mother.
     Carolina wolf spiders, like all members of their family of spiders, don't make webs.  Instead, they quickly stalk across leaf-covered, woodland floors in pursuit of invertebrates, mostly at night, as wolves hunt big game.  This species of wolf spider has a body about three-quarters of an inch long, eight legs, as all spiders do, and eight dark eyes in three rows on the head.  And Carolina wolf spiders have light-brown, sparse "hair" all over their bodies and legs.  That hair allows them to be camouflaged on forest floors.          
     Each female wolf spider spins a round, white egg sac in which she lays dozens of eggs, attaches that tiny pouch to her spinnerets at the end of her abdomen and drags it around behind her as she hunts invertebrates to eat.  When the babies hatch, they climb onto their mother's back for safety until they are ready to care for themselves.  
     Six-spotted fishing spiders resemble wolf spiders, don't spin webs and are unique in that they stalk insects, tadpoles and tiny fish among water plants in the shallows of ponds and slow streams.  They even put a couple of legs in the water to feel for aquatic prey.
     Six-spotted fishing spiders have bodies up to three-quarters of an inch long and a leg span of two and one-half inches.  They are mostly brown, which allows them to blend into their surroundings, have eight eyes in two rows and a yellow line along each flank from the front of the head to the tip of the abdomen.
     Each female fishing spider uses silk to make a nursery web to lay eggs in.  She carries that rounded egg sac under her body until hatching time.  Then the female creates a nursery web and suspends that sac among the strands.  She rests nearby until the spiderlings areold enough to disperse.
     All spiders are interesting little critters, and each family of them have beauty and unique characteristics.  Watch for them when outdoors.  They are almost everywhere.      

Backyard Nature Entertainment

     Each summer, we have much wonderful and inspiring nature entertainment in our suburban back yard in New Holland, Pennsylvania, free and daily, in the forms of mourning doves, house sparrows, goldfish, koi, little brown bats, fireflies and annual cicadas.  These are common species to be sure, but I never tire of experiencing them.  I enjoy the everyday activities of these summer neighbors, which are relaxing and inspiring to me in the comfort of my own home.
     The doves and sparrows nest on and around our house because they have grown accustomed to human activities and constructions.  And neighbors feeding birds help keep those bird species, and others, in our neighborhood through the year.
     Currently a pair of doves has a nest on each of two of our window air conditioners that they use at the same time.  When one pair of young doves is half grown in their grassy nursery, their mother lays two eggs in her other cradle.  And when the first young fledge, the second brood hatches.  And when the second brood is half grown, their mother lays another clutch of two eggs in the first nest, and so it goes here from March into September.  A pair of doves could raise six broods of two young for a total of twelve during the warmer months of a year.  But wind blows some nests and eggs to the ground, destroying them.  And crows, blue jays, house cats, opossums, raccoons and larger hawks and owls take their toll of eggs and young doves.  And Cooper's hawks catch some of the adult doves anytime of year.
     House sparrows are originally from Europe, invasive and drive certain native bird species from nesting territories.  But the constant, lively activities of little groups of house sparrows are entertaining in cities, suburbs and farm yards.  Here at home a pair of these weaver finches has a bulky, grass nursery in a decorative wreath in the front of our house and another pair has a cradle on a third window air conditioner.  A third pair of sparrows has a grassy nest in a dilapidated, metal box on a roadside, electric pole right in front of our suburban home.  With all these pairs of house sparrows double or triple nesting in a summer, we have close to a hundred lively house sparrows in our neighborhood in winter, all of which come to feeders.
     I enjoy sitting by our one hundred gallon, outdoor fish pond in our back lawn to experience the beauty and constant activities of six goldfish and three koi in the clear water.  No two of these fish are alike and they are the more interesting because of their variety of colors and color patterns.  Their colors are brilliant and the fish continually swim under and out from under several small lily pads on the water's surface.
     Soon after each spring, summer and autumn sunset, a few little brown bats are entertaining when performing silhouetted aerial ballets in the darkening sky as they chase and feed on flying insects.  On powerful wings, they swiftly circle, swoop and dive across the sky to catch their prey in their toothed mouths.  I can see the ears on those bats that sweep close to where I am on our lawn.  And I think about the brain of each bat analyzing the echos of their continuous flow of verbal squeaks striking objects large and small in front of them.  By their use of a kind of radar, they can form a mental image of the landscape and the flying insects in front of them, which allows them to avoid collisions and catch flying prey.                 
     Every sunset from mid-June to late in July, a near-fantasy of millions of male fireflies present overwhelming shows of twinkling lights over fields, meadows and suburban lawns, including ours.  Each evening, they climb vegetation and launch into the air like tiny helicopters, flashing their cold, abdominal lights as they go.  The purpose of those innumerable flashing lights during summer nights is to bring the firefly genders together for reproduction.  Then all adult fireflies disappear by their death.  But the species is carried on by their carnivorous larvae in the soil.
     And in the evening during much of August, dozens of male annual cicadas emit buzzy, pulsating trills from trees in our neighborhood, and thousands of other ones in the eastern United States.  Male cicadas vibrate flaps under their abdomens to make that loud sound that overwhelms suburban neighborhoods.  The purpose of that buzzing is to bring the genders together for mating.  By the end of August, the cicadas' trilling is silent because of the insects' deaths.  But, again, the species continues in the form of larvae sipping sugary sap from tree rootlets.
     These are the more abundant, entertaining and inspiring bits of nature in our back yard that we experience on a daily, intimate basis.  Readers can find inspiring nature in abundance in their neighborhoods by getting out and observing on an almost daily basis.  The rewards of those experiences will be great.            


       

Feathered Characters

     The last couple of evenings at home, while sitting out on a lawn chair, I've noticed a Carolina wren going to roost for the night in a flap of our picnic table umbrella.  An unusual place for a nightly roost, I thought, until I remembered this is a Carolina wren.  This species of wren does all kinds of odd things, like nesting in outdoor grills, deserted flower pots, pockets of pants on washlines, utility sheds, stone walls and other odd places.  So why not a Carolina roosting in a table umbrella?    
     Each bird and mammal has a personality of its own, making it more interesting to associate with.  And three kinds of small birds that raise young in southeastern Pennsylvania, as elsewhere, including Carolina wrens, yellow-breasted chats and gray catbirds, seem to have loads of character.  And many Carolina wrens and gray catbirds live in older suburban areas with their many bushes and trees where they are most easily seen, heard and enjoyed by most people. 
     These species also have other characteristics in common, including rearing offspring in bulky, cup nests of tiny twigs, rootlets and grass placed in dense, overgrown thickets of vines, shrubbery, saplings and other vegetation in woodland edges, hedgerows and stream edges.  They all have large beaks and long tails for their sizes.  They are all energetic most of the time, and have unusual, diagnostic songs.  And because these species are shy and skulking in the underbrush, they are heard more often than seen in the impenetrable, protective thickets they summer in.
     Carolina wrens are the largest wren in the eastern United States, where they are permanent residents.  Both genders have attractive, warm-brown feathering and males of this species sing loud, cheery chants the year around, and most any time of day.  They cheer many a mid-winter's day when no other bird song is heard. 
     Carolina wrens search for invertebrate food low in vegetative tangles near the ground, and poke for it on the ground under thickets and tangles.  On the ground they move in vigorous, jerky hops.
     Yellow-breasted chats are olive-brown above, with yellow chests and white bellies.  They raise young in brushy tangles in most of North America, but winter in Mexico and Central America.  Chats have been designated as belonging to the New World warbler family of birds, but they may not be warblers at all.  They certainly don't look like warblers.  In fact, no one seems to know what family they are in because of their being so unique.  They imitate the calls and songs of other bird species, as do members of the mimidae family, which includes gray catbirds and northern mockingbirds.  And they are long-legged like thrashers, which are other kinds of mimidae.  And like mimidae, chats consume invertebrates and berries.
     Like male mockingbirds, male chats have unusual song habits.  Mockers often sing at night through summer, with a variety of loud notes, many of which are imitations of sounds they have heard in their neighborhoods.  Sometimes male mockers sing while in floppy flight above their overgrown nesting territories, all of which draws attention to themselves to attract a mate for rearing offspring.  Male chats, too, fly in loose, sloppy flight, though it is controlled, above the thickets of their nesting territories while uttering a series of loud cackles, clucks, whistles and hoots to attract and hold a mate for raising babies.     
     Gray catbirds are so common, they seem to be in every patch of shrubbery.  Being mimics in the mimidae family, they sing the songs of several kinds of birds, making some people think there are several types of birds on their lawn when there is only a single male catbird, who has his own series of delightful songs.  This species even sings at dusk until the sky is almost completely dark. 
     Gray catbirds blend into the gray shadows of thickets where they are difficult to spot, but where the males sing seemingly ceaselessly at times.  They often sing so softly it seems they are singing to themselves to keep themselves company.     
     Sometimes when I mow the grass on our lawn, a catbird or two watches the process, which puzzled me at first.  But when the mower stirred up little, brown moths, the catbirds were right on those insects to eat them.
     Catbirds also run and stop, run and stop on short-grass lawns, much as American robins do.  In that way the catbirds are picking up invertebrates from those lawns. 
     These species of small birds are big in character, providing entertainment to those who see them in their native habitats.  They are pretty, lively birds with lots of interesting personality.         
           

Meadow Stream Borders

     I visited the overgrown borders of a stream in a meadow in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania early in July to see what critters were in that long, narrow habitat jutting out from a bottomland woods.  The small variety of plant species there, including silver maple trees, jewelweeds, reed canary-grass and stinging nettles, dominated the shores of that stream.  That little waterway was fenced to keep cattle out, which is why it grew tall with bottomland vegetation.
     I was only at that stream for an hour, but I saw a lot of interesting wildlife, much of it in that waterway.  Three kinds of small fish, crayfish, water striders, bluet damselflies and black-winged damselflies were visible to me.  And I heard several unseen green frogs belching and gulping along the shores of the stream.  They were male green frogs calling to attract females of their kind into the water to spawn.  
     Small, mixed schools of black-nosed dace and banded killifish swam into the current in mid-stream.  Both these species are common in the eastern United States, up to two inches long, eat invertebrates, streamlined to easily cope with the current and mostly brown to blend into the mud on the bottom of the waterway.  These minnows are attractive and graceful while constantly undulating in place or swimming upstream into the current with little effort.  However, herons, egrets, belted kingfishers, water snakes and other creatures prey on these small fish.
     Dace have a black stripe running along each flank from nose to tail.  And male dace have an orange stripe just under that black one and orange fins in May and June to exhibit their breeding readiness.  Killifish always have dark, vertical bars on their flanks.  Dace and killifish both spawn in the shallows of the streams and brooks they live in.
     I saw a couple of brown and barred Johnny darters, which is a kind of fish with no air bladder to lift off the bottom of a stream or brook.  Therefore, darters forever scan for invertebrate food on the bottoms of waterways. 
     I saw a crayfish crawling about on the bottom of the stream in its quest for decaying plant and animal material.  It, too, is the color of the mud on the bottom, which camouflages this little crustacean.
     Several water striders were skating across the surface of slow-moving parts of the stream.  These insects have huge feet which broadly distribute their minimal weight so they don't break the surface tension of the water and sink into it.  Their middle pair of legs propel them forward and the front pair grab land invertebrates that fall helpless on the water's surface.  Striders are dark-brown on top, which camouflages them before the bottoms of waterways.  
     Male bluet damselflies resembled tiny, thin streaks of blue on plants near the stream.  And a few male black-winged damselflies danced in sunbeams over the stream.  The beautiful black-wings do have four black wings and thin, iridescent-green abdomens.  Both these species of damselflies spawn in the shallows of small waterways like this one. 
     A few, pretty red admiral butterflies landed on some of the stinging nettle plants.  They were female red admirals laying eggs on nettle leaves, the only food of their caterpillars.
     I also saw and heard a few types of small, nesting birds among the silver maples, tall grasses and "weeds" along that little waterway.  Those birds included a song sparrow along a shore of the stream, a pair of northern cardinals, a few tufted titmice, a pair of gray catbirds and a pair of eastern phoebes.   
     Song sparrows like to be along the shores of small waterways that flow through thickets of shrubbery.  The cardinals and catbirds were nesting somewhere in the shrubbery near the stream.  The titmice probably were a family that grew up in the nearby woods.
     But the phoebes were the most interesting pair of birds that day along that little waterway.  For years a pair of phoebes have been nesting in a cradle of mud and moss of their own making on a support beam under a small bridge along the edge of the adjacent woods.  The pair of phoebes I saw that day regularly foraged for invertebrates in the thin strip of silver maples and other plants along the small stream I was watching.  Some of those invertebrates were fed to their young under the bridge.
     It is amazing the variety of adaptable wildlife that can be experienced in a thin strip of overgrown vegetation along a small waterway in a human-made meadow.  Other little corners of habitat, natural or built, can be just as favorable to wildlife.  Readers can enjoy checking on overgrown places near their homes to see what wildlife is living in those wild spots.            
    

Creatures of Woodland Brooks

     Another one of my favorite habitats to visit in southeastern Pennsylvania in summer is some of the cool, clear, freshwater brooks that tumble musically over rocks in shallow stretches and swirl into deeper, slower pools or "holes", all in the shade of deciduous woods.  Several kinds of creatures live about those crystalline holes with slower currents where they don't have to expend as much energy as they would when coping with swift water.
     The first life I usually see around those stream pools is the intriguing, mid-air dancing of male black-winged damselflies.  Those dragonfly relatives are striking with their iridescent-green abdomens and four black wings they hold upright when at rest on a streamside leaf or twig.  And they are particularly handsome when dancing, with wings fluttering like those of butterflies, in shafts of sunlight in the shady woods.  Those male damselflies are courting females of their kind as a prelude to their spawning in woodland streams.
     Both the thin, brown larval damselflies on stream bottoms and the adults in the air consume small invertebrates.
     Little groups of water striders, which are a kind of insect, "skate" across the surface of stream pools.  Their long feet act like skis to distribute their minimal weight so they don't break through the water's surface tension and sink into it.
     Striders' middle pair of legs work together to row these insects over the water's surface and their front pair catch land invertebrates that tumbled helplessly onto the water.
     Striders are dark on top, which camouflages them against the bottom of streams.  And they are white below, which makes them hard to see from the bottoms of streams.
     Schools of black-nosed dace and individual brook trout, brown trout or rainbow trout live in some of the near-pristine streams and their holes in the cool woods.  All these handsome fish ingest a variety of invertebrates in the clear water.  And they all are mostly brown on top, which blends them into the bottoms of the waterways they live in.  However, mink catch and eat some of the trout.
     Several kinds of small, brownish critters live camouflaged under and between stones on stream bottoms, including Johnny darter fish, crayfish, mayfly larvae, stonefly larvae and water pennies.   All these creatures need good water quality and their presence in a waterway indicates exactly that.        Darters have no air bladders to  give them lift in the water, so they rest between rocks on the bottom of streams where they eat tiny invertebrates and fish eggs.  They move about in short spurts across the bottom.
     Crayfish are a kind of freshwater crustacean that hides among stones on stream bottoms.  They venture out, mostly at night, to feed on decaying plant and animal materials.  Raccoons and mink consume some of the available crayfish.
     Mayfly larvae, stonefly larvae and water pennies, which are round, brown and a kind of beetle larvae, are all fairly flat so they don't get swept away in the current and can slip between stones to hide from fish and other predators in the water.  The mayfly larvae and stonefly larvae eat tiny invertebrates while the water pennies scrape alga off the rocks they cling to.
     As larvae and adults, up to three kinds of lungless salamanders, including red, two-lined and dusky salamanders, live under stones along the edges of woodland brooks and streams where they consume invertebrates.  Not having lungs, these amphibians take in oxygen and expire carbon dioxide through their moist skins and mouth linings.
     Louisiana waterthrushes, which are a species of birds, build cradles and raise young in notches in streambanks in the woods.  And they patrol the stony edges of little waterways in woodlands to pick invertebrates like mayflies and others from under small stones to feed themselves and their young.
     Waterthrushes bob and dance as they walk along the edges of woodland waterways to get food.  I think that rhythmic action is a form of camouflage as they mimic woody debris bouncing in the current along the edges of the waterways.  
     When along brooks and streams in summer woods, look for some of these interesting, little creatures.  They make time in those lovely woodlands more enjoyable.      
   
           
          

Cow Pasture Streams

     The slow-moving, deeper parts, "holes", of clear, running streams in sunny cow pastures in southeastern Pennsylvania are one of my favorite habitats to experience in summer.  Those waterways don't always appear so, but they are full of attractive, adaptable and interesting creatures of several kinds.
     Bluet damselflies, green darner dragonflies and white-tailed and twelve-spotted skimmer dragonflies are some of the first critters noticed at these streams.  These common members of the dragonfly family are often obvious because they zip through the air over streams, ponds and meadows in pursuit of flying insects to eat, and mates.  Bluets are tiny, thin strips of blue, white-tails have white abdomens and twelve-spots have 12 black and white spots on their four wings, two white and one black on each wing.  And the three-inch-long green darners have green thoraxes and blue abdomens. 
     Females of each kind of damselfly and dragonfly spawn eggs in the slower sections of these streams, and in ponds.  The brownish nymphs of each species feed on aquatic invertebrates, tadpoles and other small, water critters on the bottoms of those waters until they morph as winged adults and escape the water for life in the air when we see them, sometimes in abundance.
     Female mallard ducks raise broods of ducklings on ponds and some cow pasture streams.  The young consume invertebrates to grow rapidly, while their mothers concentrate mostly on plant life.
    A type of bug called water striders walks on the surface of water in stream holes, and ponds.  These insects are dark on top and silvery below, which blends them into their stream habitat.  The six legs of striders spread their slight weight over the water's surface tension to the extent they don't break through it; sort of like the use of snowshoes on snow.  Their pair of middle legs propel them across the surface of the water and their front legs capture land invertebrates that fell helpless on the water's surface.  
     A variety of fish congregate in the slower holes in meadow streams, including Johnny darters, black-nosed dace, banded killifish, white suckers and carp.  All these fish species are basically brown, which camouflages them against the stony or muddy bottoms of the streams.  Darters have no air bladders to hold them in mid-stream, so they lie on the bottom where they ingest tiny invertebrates and other small critters.  Schools of dace and killifish, often in mixed groups, hunt invertebrates in mid-stream.  White suckers and carp consume both plant and animal material, but mostly off the bottoms of the streams.  The different foods in different parts of streams reduce competition for food among these fish species.
     Looking like tiny lobsters, crayfish, which are a kind of freshwater crustacean, live under stones and patches of vegetation on the bottoms of flowing waterways.  But sometimes they can be spotted moving over the bottoms of those streams in search of bits of plants and animals. 
     Muskrats, which are rodents that resemble big meadow mice, dig holes into stream banks at the normal water level, then dig uphill in those banks.  Muskrats eat cattail roots, grass and other kinds of vegetation growing near water.
     Great blue herons, great egrets, green herons, mink and raccoons patrol some of these pasture waterways to get food.  Coons get mostly crayfish and frogs, while mink capture those same foods, and some of the larger fish.  Herons and egrets snare all those creatures, and mice in the meadow.  Interestingly, herons and egrets dunk the mice they catch in water to slick the rodents' fur so they can swallow them more easily.
     Some herons, coons and mink live and rear young near some cow pasture streams.  Herons build stick cradles in trees, raccoons live in burrows in trees and the ground and mink live in abandoned muskrat holes in stream banks and in muskrat burrows of those muskrats they killed and ingested.
     Belted kingfishers and rough-winged swallows both dig nesting burrows near the tops of stream banks.  The kingfishers catch and eat small fish while the swallows consume flying insects.
     Colonies of green frogs and small groups of painted turtles sit on top of aquatic plants in the slower holes of pasture streams.  The frogs sit there, half-submerged, to catch and eat invertebrates and to croak to attract females for spawning in the slower water.  The turtles are there to soak up the warming sunlight so they have energy to look for food and mates.
     Fowler's toads also spawn in the slower stretches of meadow streams.  I hear their short, nasal "waaaah" many times during June nights.
     Snapping turtles and northern water snakes live in many slower holes in pasture waterways.  Both these creatures are completely predatory, feeding on fish, frogs, tadpoles and other aquatic creatures.  They, too, sunbathe, but not obviously.
     Red-winged blackbirds and song sparrows live and nest along meadow streams wherever grasses and cattails grow high enough for these two bird species to find enough shelter to construct grassy nests.  Female red-wings build nurseries up the stems and female sparrows make cradles on the ground at the bases of the plants.  Both species feed on invertebrates.                 
     Little groups of attractive American goldfinches visit pasture streams to eat alga in the shallows.  Male goldfinches in summer are yellow and black, adding more beauty to the waterways and pastures.
     Watch streams in meadows during summer more closely.  They are full of interesting, adaptable life, making our lives more enjoyable.  Or look at other habitats of interest near your homes more closely.  They, too, probably are full of intriguing, beautiful life. 

Milkweed Menageries

     As of this date, many common milkweed plants, which are native to North America, are full sized and in bloom in meadows, along country roadsides and in some peoples' flower gardens in southeastern Pennsylvania.  At this time, they have clusters of dusty-pink, waxy-looking, sweet-scented blossoms on top of their stems where a variety of bees, colorful butterflies and other kinds of visiting insects sip their nectar, pollinating those flowers in the process, and making patches of milkweeds more interesting to us. 
     Common milkweed plants host at least five kinds of insects through most of those insects' lives.  Those critters live on milkweeds and eat certain parts of their host plants.  And, interestingly, most of those milkweed insects are orange and black.  All those creatures are immune to toxic chemicals in milkweed sap, which developed in the sap to protect those plants from being eaten.  But with no harm to themselves, milkweed-dwelling insects collect that toxin in their bodies that make them taste bad to birds and other, potential, predators of insects, which is a form of defense.  Perhaps those same insects are orange and black to forewarn would-be predators that they are not edible and to leave them alone, which is another form of defense.
     The caterpillars of monarch butterflies ingest nothing but the thick leaves of milkweeds.  Female monarchs have to be botanists to lay their light-green eggs, one at a time, on milkweed leaves so their young will have food.  The larger, more noticeable, milkweed larvae are attractive with their yellow, black and white stripes crosswise over the tops of their bodies; colors that say "don't eat me".
     What is most interesting about monarch butterflies is the last generation of four generations of each year has the ability to migrate south across the North American continent to certain spots in Florida, California or Mexico to escape the northern winter, though they never were there before.  I don't think anyone knows how those monarchs know where to go to spend the winter.  Their southward flights in fall are another miracle of nature.
     The beautiful, one-inch-long milkweed tussock moth caterpillars appear furry with tufts of long "hair", which makes them look like a tiny dust mop.  Mostly black with even longer white hairs at both ends and orange tufts of "fur" on top, these are the larvae of a small moth with a wing span of one and a half inches, silvery-brown wings and yellow abdomens.  The caterpillars of this moth ingest nothing but milkweed foliage before they pupate.  Female moths of this kind have to be able to identify milkweeds from the many other types of plants in any one spot to assure food for their developing young.  The hair on the caterpillars' bodies also protects them from being consumed.  Most birds don't like to eat hairy caterpillars. 
     A pretty little insect, adult red milkweed beetles also eat the leaves of milkweeds, as do their larvae.  This is a half-inch, red beetle with black spots on heads, thoraxes and wing covers. 
     Two species of true bugs, large milkweed bugs and small eastern milkweed bugs are similar in appearance and habits.  The larger kind grows to be five-eight of an inch long while the smaller type can attain a half inch.  Both species as adult bugs are black with similar, orange-red markings that make them attractive to us, but warn away predators.  The wingless, larval forms are orange. 
     Both these related bugs, as youngsters and adults, feed on the developing and mature seeds of milkweeds in that plant's seed pods.  There are one or more generations of these bugs each year and the last generation of adults overwinters as adults.  The next summer, females lay eggs on the growing milkweed plants.
     Milkweeds have a final beauty during September and October, when leaves on deciduous trees turn bright colors.  Each milkweed seed pod dies, turns gray and splits open, revealing scores of brown, flat seeds overlapping each other like scales on a closed pine cone.  These, of course, are the seeds that survived the ravaging of milkweed bugs.  Eventually those seeds tumble out of their pods, each one with a white, silky parachute that carries its seedy cargo away on the wind.  Hundreds of milkweed seeds on the wind at once is a beautiful sight.    
     Look at milkweed plants more closely.  They have many inspiring beauties and intrigues that can make our lives more enjoyable.