To pass the afternoon, we sat quietly along the edge of a pond created recently by North American Beavers (Castor canadensis). They first constructed their dam on this small stream about five years ago. Since then, a flourishing wetland has become established. Have a look.
Vegetation surrounding the inundated floodplain helps sequester nutrients and sediments to purify the water while also providing excellent wildlife habitat.The beaver lodge was built among shrubs growing in shallow water in the middle of the pond.Woolgrass (Scirpus cyperinus) is a bulrush that thrives as an emergent and as a terrestrial plant in moist soils bordering the pond.A male Common Whitetail dragonfly keeping watch over his territory.A Twelve-spotted Skimmer perched on Soft Rush.A Blue Dasher dragonfly seizing a Fall Field Cricket (Gryllus pennsylvanicus).A Spicebush Swallowtail visiting a Cardinal Flower.A Green Heron looking for small fish, crayfish, frogs, and tadpoles.The Green Heron stalking potential prey.A Wood Duck feeding on the tiny floating plant known as Lesser Duckweed (Lemna minor).A Least Sandpiper poking at small invertebrates along the muddy edge of the beaver pond.A Solitary Sandpiper.A Solitary Sandpiper testing the waters for proper feeding depth.A Pectoral Sandpiper searches for its next morsel of sustenance.The Sora (Porzana carolina) is a seldom seen rail of marshlands including those created by North American Beavers. Common Cattails, sedges, and rushes provide these chicken-shaped wetland birds with nesting and loafing cover.
Isn’t that amazing? North American Beavers build and maintain what human engineers struggle to master—dams and ponds that reduce pollution, allow fish passage, and support self-sustaining ecosystems. Want to clean up the streams and floodplains of your local watershed? Let the beavers do the job!
Let’s take a quiet stroll through the forest to have a look around. The spring awakening is underway and it’s a marvelous thing to behold. You may think it a bit odd, but during this walk we’re not going to spend all of our time gazing up into the trees. Instead, we’re going to investigate the happenings at ground level—life on the forest floor.
Rotting logs and leaf litter create the moisture retaining detritus in which mesic forest plants grow and thrive. Note the presence of mosses and a vernal pool in this damp section of forest.The earliest green leaves in the forest are often those of the Skunk Cabbage (Simplocarpus foetidus). This member of the arum family gets a head start by growing in the warm waters of a spring seep or in a stream-fed wetland. Like many native wildflowers of the forest, Skunk Cabbage takes advantage of early-springtime sun to flower and grow prior to the time in late April when deciduous trees grow foliage and cast shade beneath their canopy.Among the bark of dead and downed trees, the Mourning Cloak butterfly (Nymphalis antiopa) hibernates for the winter. It emerges to alight on sun-drenched surfaces in late winter and early spring.Another hibernating forest butterfly that emerges on sunny early-spring days is the Eastern Comma (Polygonia comma), also known as the Hop Merchant.In a small forest brook, a water strider (Gerridae) chases its shadow using the surface tension of the water to provide buoyancy. Forests are essential for the protection of headwaters areas where our streams get their start.Often flooded only in the springtime, fish-free pools of water known as vernal ponds are essential breeding habitat for many forest-dwelling amphibians. Unfortunately, these ephemeral wetland sites often fall prey to collecting, dumping, filling, and vandalism by motorized and non-motorized off-roaders, sometimes resulting in the elimination of the populations of frogs, toads, and salamanders that use them.Wood Frogs (Lithobates sylvaticus) emerge from hiding places among downed timber and leaf litter to journey to a nearby vernal pond where they begin calling still more Wood Frogs to the breeding site.Wood Frog eggs must hatch and tadpoles must transform into terrestrial frogs before the pond dries up in the summertime. It’s a risky means of reproduction, but it effectively evades the enormous appetites of fish.When the egg laying is complete, adult Wood Frogs return to the forest and are seldom seen during the rest of the year.In early spring, Painted Turtles emerge from hideouts in larger forest pools, particularly those in wooded swamps, to bask in sunny locations.Dead standing trees, often called snags, are essential habitats for many species of forest wildlife. There is an entire biological process, a micro-ecosystem, involved in the decay of a dead tree. It includes fungi, bacteria, and various invertebrate animals that reduce wood into the detritus that nourishes and hydrates new forest growth.Birds like this Red-headed Woodpecker feed on insects found in large snags and nest almost exclusively in them. Many species of wildlife rely on dead trees, both standing and fallen, during all or part of their lives.
There certainly is more to a forest than the living trees. If you’re hiking through a grove of timber getting snared in a maze of prickly Multiflora Rose (Rosa multiflora) and seeing little else but maybe a wild ungulate or two, then you’re in a has-been forest. Logging, firewood collection, fragmentation, and other man-made disturbances inside and near forests take a collective toll on their composition, eventually turning them to mere woodlots. Go enjoy the forests of the lower Susquehanna valley while you still can. And remember to do it gently; we’re losing quality as well as quantity right now—so tread softly.
The White-tailed Deity in a woodlot infested by invasive tangles of Multiflora Rose.
