ATA Animal tales #1

I spent 12 years living next to a creek and swamp and spending time most days out in it. I had a superb sitting spot about 15' above the creek at the edge of a concrete culvert with brush growing all around where I could sit unnoticed. Directly below me the creek flowed out and collected in a deep pool formed by a beaver dam. From there the creek flowed out through drowning hardwoods and dissolved into a swamp of several hundred acres formed by a triangle of 3 major roads. This is a collection of short stories from there.

Mosquito welcome
Every spring when the first warm weather arrived so too did the denizens from the wetlands, that bane of man and animal - mosquitos. Many times I had cursed them wondering what possible purpose could there be for their existence? I had once gone night fishing with a friend and we found ourselves completely covered in the biting terrors. Our reaction was the usual swatting and dancing around but the fishing was good and we were determined to not leave our spot. This night we tried a novel approach of relaxing and letting them suck blood freely from us. Strangely enough after about 10 minutes their hunger was sated and though many buzzed about very few would bother biting us. They may have a rule about not killing their victim. One of the strangest experiences of my life.

Dancing the sky
One resident of the tunnel was a colony of barn swallows; blue iridescent birds whose acrobatic maneuvers are thrilling to behold. Nothing could be more graceful in flight. Barn Swallows are seasonal residents who migrate as far as South America to spend the winter. They return almost to the day of when the mosquitos make their appearance here in Virginia. How they time it is a mystery but it but we know their acrobatic skill is necessary in order to catch mosquitos by the thousands each and every day. Without mosquitos there would be no swallows. To make their nests which they stick to the concrete sides of the bridge the swallows must do something very dangerous. They land on the ground to gather up mud and tiny mollusk shells which act as cement mixed with their saliva. You can find their tiny peck marks in the mud where they do this. Gathering nesting materia and on their nests would be the only places they perched, otherwise they were out flying. For these birds flight was so effortless your felt a freedom just watching them.
It then occurred to me that this would make an ideal opportunity for a hungry fox. No sooner had that thought come to me than a red fox came slinking through the cattails - right to where the swallows had been gathering their nesting material. I knew what the fox knew. This is how we glimpse into the lives of animals.
Within days of their arrival the swallows pair off, finding a mate while flitting about feasting on the clouds of mosquitos. Then came the nest building with repeated trips to the mud flat at one side of the beaver dam. A few weeks later the fledglings took their first flights and came bursting from beneath me and out in to the wide world. You see the joy as they take to the sky and chirps of pure delight at their newfound freedom. There is something really cool about having birds fly out from a tunnel beneath you. Their reliable return became my favorite spring rite. It was experiences like these that made me feel connected. I wanted to embrace it all, internalize it. I had all the nature I needed right there.

Unexpected beauty
On a late spring morning I sat watching my pool (technically it was the beavers) there were 2 large snapping turtles paddling around on the surface cautiously eyeing each other. They swam in lazy circles, perhaps 3 or 4 times before they slowly spiraled in towards each other. I had no idea what would happen next. The smaller snapper reached it's front legs forward on either side of it's head and with claws outstretched moved up to the face of the larger one. Suddenly the claws began to move in a wave rather like a human playing a piano but so fast they became a blur. It was the male and as part of their courtship he will tickle the cheeks of the female. After a few minutes of tender face touching they began twisting and rolling as they sought to position their bodies together. Nothing I had ever seen, not even the acrobatics of swallows would be as graceful as the dance of these turtles. It was an underwater ballet performed delicately by big, ugly snapping turtles. This shattered some misconceptions I had about beauty and about snapping turtles. When least expected is how nature reveals itself to us.

I have many more stories and slides I need to scan but will hopefully add these in following installments.

a reply to: Asktheanimals

Just lovely! The vividness of your diary puts me right there in your world. It's amazing how many of nature's wonders we overlook in our day-to-day lives.

Sometimes, I feel like I'm in my own little world, stopping to look up and observe swallows as they dance in flight. It's artistic to us, but, to them, it's how they nourish themselves; exactly the same as bats, which people curse, but have their place in the ecosystem... along with those pesky mosquitoes on which they gorge.

a reply to: Asktheanimals

Fantastic! Thanks for sharing!
It's so incredible to sit in a natural setting as you've described, and even more so when you can return season after season.

a reply to: ColeYounger

What was remarkable to me was I had lived in the mountains and in a small city before moving to Richmond which is fairly large. In both places I found plenty of wildlife but substantially more in the city where several creeks flowed. Anywhere we don't build something nature establishes life. This would be true in Richmond where they had built several expressways during the 1960's and 70's. In places the creek was completely moved and highway built but along the creek things grew thick and hid well the animals there. Deer, fox, beaver, muskrats, otters, great blue herons, geese and a plethora of smaller animals could be found there. There was even a nature park of several hundred acres that was rarely visited that became my wilderness backyard.

Spending years in the same places allowed to me see how development messes with nature and changes areas prone to flooding very drastically. How a small stand of dead sycamores were essential for blue herons to nest in and once they were gone so were the heron. Watching the progression of plant communities and studying erosion as well as point sources of pollution were informative. I collected bags full of trash and waded through the swamp in all types of weather. I got involved with the local rec dept and public works as well as planners to try and protect what areas I could. The park would be discovered by mountain bikers and I saw the damage they did in just a single season. My spot would be key to my sanity even though the creek would later flood our house during a hurricane.