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.