The hole story

This morning started chilly and still. It was very windy last night and a lot of the more interesting creatures are not doing much. A few flashes of movement in the ditch tell me the carp are roiling around. There seems to be six of them now and none are in apparent distress, they are eating vegetation at a rapid rate and roiling up the mud looking for stuff. Last night I watched a small catfish swimming drain wards (south to clear ditch). It had the distinctive barbels on the large face and was a brown color in the flashlight, about the length of my thumb. I still find it crazy these fish prefer to exist in a 1/2 inch of water. Of course, the true experts in that field would be the mosquito fish. These crazy animals are deliberately introduced to cut down on mosquito larvae in standing water. They do a good job of this, bu they also eat frog spawn and anything else they can get their fins into. They are remarkably hardy able to eat anything and survive in almost any conditions where there is water for their gills. They were imported from Africa and are a invasive species with a heavy burden put onto native species. The ditch is a heavily modified man-made system, where animals survive the best they can.

I had often noticed lately that the dominant trees in the area are decidedly different. The elms are leafing out and green while the cottonwoods are still looking dead. Of course, not being into botany, it took a while before I could recognize the buds and then the flowers.

Cottonwoods are unusual as they can grow in many ways, they shed seeds (cotton) , they can grow if the ends of the brittle twigs fall into wet clay. It seems that the cottonwoods, which are old, and remnants of when the river had an extensive flood plain. all bud at different times, unlike in the fall when they all release their billowy seeds together. The young, invasive elms, on the other hand are all growing and dropping their seeds like crazy. It seems like the trees are always dropping something around here.

While there was little activity around here this morning from the animals, I did notice there are suddenly numerous small shallow holes in the sand. There are many suspects; there have been many wasps digging in the sand lately, for instance. My money is on young lizards, which should be appearing soon. looking closer, you can see the thin crust that forms a dome that prevents the sand filling back in, the classic wide porch is made by the front legs of lizard as it throws the sand backwards. Holes is a whole blog series just on it's own, along with walls, and how animals interact with their environments.