A Shift in A Pond Community: American Lotus

Ever visit a place so often that when something new arrives it becomes a whole new place? This happened where I work, a beautiful farm and park that contains several constructed wetlands that over the years have naturalized beautifully. Each has a path, one paved around, the other grassy and full of muskrat holes. The grassy path pond is large, more like a small lake, built by Ducks Unlimited over twenty years ago. Full of cattail and muskrat to eat it, it is year-round haven and hot spot for wetland birds of all types. Well it was full of cattail last time I looked. Now it is full of this:

American Lotus

Wait. I just walked this pond in early spring and it was still full of cattail. How did a complete shift in wetland plants occur? American Lotus has taken over the two acre pond and cattail is, except for some edges, all but gone! It's never been here before. No one planted it. It's rare in Maryland except for a large coves full of it in Turner's Creek off the Sassafras River, just across the Chesapeake from Swan Harbor, maybe less than twenty miles as the crow or heron or egret or ibis flies. And that explains it. Wading and scavenging birds carry lots of things on their legs such as fish eggs, frog eggs, rootlets, algae. They also carry a lot in their poop like seeds, rhizomes, and bits of plant material that regenerates when squirted into a wet environment. Maybe squirted is too strong a word?

So really, that huge meadow of American Lotus is not all that far away for these cross-Bay travelers:

Great White Egret

Killdeer

Glossy Ibis

Great Blue Heron (juvenile)

The American Lotus, though rare in Maryland and Pennsylvania, is considered a real pest in Rhode Island where conservation folks are doing their best to get rid of it. It's aggressive nature and large, really large round leaves, quickly overtake shallow ponds and shade out emergent plants. In addition, when a massive amount of this plant dies off come autumn, the decay and rotting process underwater can literally suck the oxygen out of the water, killing fish. Until other plants can compete with it, it acts a monoculture to the detriment of a diverse wetland plant community.

Seed pods will turn brown and release large seeds in the winter.

A muskrat lodge is heaped high with dead cattail stalks.

This friendly Muskrat carries a lotus leaf to her mud bank feeding platform on the bank of the pond.

The muskrat, which are all pretty tolerant of human observers here, seem to have adapted to their diet change well. A particularly friendly muskrat, who I've met before in close quarters, traveled back and forth two times with freshly picked lotus leaves to munch on, practically at my feet. There are four large lodges in the pond but where all were  obscured last summer by tall cattail stands. Though there is plenty of cattail along the banks with more emerging between the large lotus leaves. We'll see how aggressive the lotus will become as the beds continue to expand. 

Meanwhile there was plenty more to see! This is now high summer and the butterflies and dragonflies are really showing their colors!

Viceroy Butterfly  on soybeans.

Red Admiral on Gum.

Orange Sulphur on Loosestrife.

Hobomok Skipper

Summer Azure

Silver Spotted Skipper

Common Whitetail Dragonfly

Eastern Pondhawk, female

Handsome Blue Dasher!

Before we know it the summer will make its turn towards autumn. The tree crickets are now singing as are the katydids at night. And in the ponds at Swan Harbor the edges and banks are well fed upon by a myriad of beetles and caterpillars. The call went out a few days ago for volunteer hawk watchers over at Elk Neck State Park's Turkey Point Lookout. Soon everything changes again! 

All of the pictures you see in this post were taken yesterday or today at the ponds at Swan Harbor Farm, which is open to the public for birding, fishing, hiking, etc. 

Industrial Strength Wildlands

The Lower Delaware River carves deeply into the shoreline from New Castle to Delaware City, even deeper, says local photographer Mikki Wilson-Bayard over the past decade. A lifelong resident and nature buff, Mikki has documented the ever-worsening erosion into Delaware's shoreline due to increasing frequency and intensity of coastal storms. We were walking historic New Castle's Battery Park through the post-industrial marshes in search of the snowy owls that have taken up winter quarters in this industrial area. One large snowy appeared suddenly and strafed the mudflats, creating quite an uproar with a hundred Canada geese resting on the flats. It flapped powerfully over the phragmites to perch on a factory building. A life bird for Mikke, we both cheered and did the obligatory dance!

Local birder and landscape photographer Mikki Wilson-Bayard.

This section of Delaware River shoreline is a mix of quaint historic towns, recovering wetlands, rotting wharves, and manufacturing plants. The oil refinery at Delaware City to the south marks the end of the down-river industrial zone that begins in New Jersey and ends within sight of our walk for winter birds. Beyond the refinery, the river widens and on both the New Jersey and Delaware shore, is protected by an immense system of National Wildlife Refuges. Invasive plants dominate the marshes and shrubby parklands. But the birds didn't seem to mind. We quickly identified over fifteen species before leaving the park for the trail, then added another dozen species shortly after we entered the marsh trail. Amidst the relics of an industrial past, the marsh sheltered great blue heron, mallards, coots, geese, a sharp-shinned hawk, and a marsh hawk (Northern harrier).



Several great blue herons sheltered in the marsh.



Two ring-billed gulls shelter inside a watchful flock of Canada geese.
A large male snowy owl powered down the shore, harassing this large resting flock,
keeping everyone on alert!

Shoreline erosion here is dramatic and sobering. Mikki talked about her project to document the loss of shoreline in the New Castle area. Rip-rap seawalls are being installed south of town. "There is no question this has everything to do with sea level rise," she said, "If anyone wants to dispute that, then they obviously don't live anywhere near the coast!"  The State of Delaware is taking climate change very seriously, and is wasting no time in debates or denial.

http://www.dnrec.delaware.gov/climatechange/pages/climatechangeshorelineerosion.aspx

For urban families, parks like The Battery are important. Access to wildlife, the river, and open space is critical for industrial neighborhoods. The shoreline trail winds lazily through a post-industrial landscape overtaken by shrubby forest, vast marshes, and tidal guts. Relict pipelines, wharf cribs, piers, and odd collections of cement block and tires are part of what is now an enormous shoreline preservation project called "Living Shorelines" laid out and designed to soften the impact of incoming waves and provide valuable habitat for native mussels.

http://www.delawareestuary.org/living-shorelines

The view from Battery Park south to Delaware City to the massive refineries there.
In between, an equally massive shoreline restoration effort is underway.

Battery Park in historic New Castle affords urban families a beautiful riverside
experience in a landscape undergoing many changes.

As we walked along we discussed the merits of restoration in a highly impacted area. The viewshed certainly wasn't pristine, and it seemed that native and non-native flora competed for space with every step, with mostly non-native invasives winning. But we both agreed that the bigger picture was the shoreline itself, abused and battered over a century of industrial use, but resilient in a way that the wharves and factories hadn't been. The efforts of conservationists, many of them college students alongside construction workers, demonstrated a common concern for the larger problems climate change is bringing to the region.

What we were witnessing on this cold windy day in December was a transformation and a preparation to enhance and protect this vulnerable shore. Though the newly built rip-rap berms looked rough and out of place now, come summer students and workers will overlay the structure with soft fiber matting and plant native marsh grasses and mussels. With the refinery in sight, a post-carbon economy seemed out of the question for now, but where former industry had once captured and dominated the marshlands, there is now at least marsh and the possibility that with care and attention, this stretch of shoreline will recover.

A nice video from Rutgers explains the Living Shorelines concept:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slw5iK-Or4M&feature=share&list=UUy_j7DADiFV535lZ8rzJDyA&index=2