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.
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