cairistiona's place

Posted by New Hampshire Garden Solutions

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The title of this post should be “By several ponds” but that didn’t sound right. Though I have done posts about what I’ve found at a single pond in the past I’ve learned that it doesn’t really matter what pond you visit. If you live in New Hampshire you’ll find pretty much the same things at any pond in your area. Granted, some ponds have orchids and pitcher plants along their shorelines but most don’t, so let’s just say in general a pond is a pond. I’m pointing this out because I don’t want you to think you have to go to any certain pond to see all the things in this post. Any pond should do.

Most ponds in this area have pickerel weed growing in the shallow water along their banks. I love to see their beautiful flowers, and all the insects and fish that hide among them are amazing. I once stumbled upon a fisherman who had just caught a pickerel and when I asked him where the fish had struck he pointed and said it had been hiding in the pickerel weeds off shore. That was perfect, because this plant gets its name from that fish.

American burr reed is liable to be found right next to the pickerel weeds, or at least not too far away. Both are fairly common and I’ve learned to stand near them and just watch because many insects use them, especially the leaves, for various purposes. The tiny white bits seen here protruding from the spherical flower heads are this plant’s flowers. Later on ducks and other waterfowl will eat the seeds.

Dragonflies will perch on pond plants like pickerel weed, bur reed, and the cattails seen here, lying in wait for prey. That’s just what this male widow skimmer was doing one afternoon. Both males and females love to hang off foliage in the bright, late afternoon sunshine and that’s the first place I look when I visit a pond. Looking for them on cloudy days often isn’t very productive.

Of course damselflies also perch on pond plant foliage. On this day I found what I believe was a female eastern forktail eating a smaller cousin of hers. Dragonflies do the same thing. Is it any wonder they hide among the foliage? In nature everything gets eaten.

Quite often I visit certain ponds because of the plant life I know I’ll find there. This pond on this day was full of fragrant white waterlilies all in bloom. It’s a beautiful scene and I go to see it often.

A little female or immature male red wing blackbird danced on the waterlily leaves one day. These birds are very common at most ponds in this area but you don’t often find females willing to pose. They nest down in the cattails where they can’t be easily seen and to see one doing this is unusual.

Six spotted fishing spiders can literally walk on water, and this one walked out and waited on a waterlily leaf for a tasty morsel to come along. If I could have held this one in the palm of my hand it would have filled it.

Those morsels fishing spiders wait for could be anything, including this common blue damselfly. Damselflies also like to perch on waterlily leaves and wait for food to come along but sometimes by doing so, they become the food.

One day as I walked along beside a pond the cattails I was walking beside began shaking violently, and then one of them disappeared under water. Less than a minute later up popped this little muskrat, eating the cattail heart. It stayed above water and ate the whole thing before finally diving. It all happened so fast it seemed like there were a thousand things to process at once but luckily I had sense enough to get photos. This was a small muskrat, not a baby but not an adult either. I’d have to say it was more teenager than anything. Its claws hadn’t fully developed and its head wasn’t even as big as the waterlily leaves that surrounded it. In fact it acted like a teenager, eyeing me while it munched on cattail heart. I could almost hear it saying “ha ha, you can’t catch me.”

An adult beaver can easily weigh 40 pounds but an adult muskrat averages 4-5 pounds, so once you get used to seeing them regularly the difference becomes fairly obvious. Muskrats are burrowing animals and they use their front claws for digging. An adult muskrat’s claws are quite long, very sharp, and dark colored, not like what we see here. That’s why I think this one was quite young.

When muskrats eat cattails they go for the white tender heart of the plant and leave all the tougher leaves and stems floating on the surface. This particular pond drained excess water through a culvert and there were screens over the culvert’s entrance. All the debris left by the muskrats began to collect on the screens and slow the drainage so when we had all the heavy rains of spring it began to be a problem. Someone came along and cleaned the debris from the culvert screens at some point and the water level began to drop and it kept dropping until there was enough of a shoreline for this green heron to hunt from. That’s just what it was doing this day when it let me stand and watch. This pond is full of frogs and must have a billion tadpoles in it. Or it did have before the heron came along. The bird is nesting nearby now.

This shot also shows the kind of debris that is left behind by muskrats and other animals, and that’s what plugged up the culvert. It wasn’t a beaver dam by any stretch, but it was enough to dramatically slow drainage.When the water level drops at this time of year the yellow flowers of bladderwort suddenly appear from the mud, and this year there are thousands of them blooming.

In another spot I saw a female wood duck. It was small enough to make me wonder if it wasn’t a duckling rather than an adult. That bladderwort over on the right shows it was swimming in very shallow water. Going by the plant’s stem I’d guess no more than three or four inches deep. The little duck was probably doing as much walking as it was swimming.

In the same place I saw the wood duck big bluestem grass was blooming. Those tiny dangling yellow bits are the plant’s male flowers. The female flowers are even smaller white wisps, too small to be seen clearly here.

I also saw the first twelve spotted skimmer dragonflies of the year where the wood duck swam. These dragonflies are large, easy to see and they’ll sit still occasionally, so that makes them perfect for anyone who likes to watch dragonflies. With a twelve spotted skimmer you get to twelve by counting the dark spots, not the white ones.

I’m seeing a lot of pondhawk dragonflies this year as well. Males like this one can be easily mistaken for blue dashers if you don’t happen to spot the green on their abdomen.

This shot of a female pondhawk dragonfly is special to me because it’s only the second usable photo of a dragonfly that I’ve been able to get using a phone camera. The female pondhawk is brightly colored and bigger than the male and she sat perfectly still while I slowly maneuvered the phone near enough to get the shot. Though I expected her to fly at any moment this dragonfly never did fly off, so I silently thanked her for being so patient with me and let her be.

I’m not the only one watching for dragonflies; there are always kingbirds in the trees at this time of year. If you happen to be a dragonfly that is spotted by one of these birds, your work here is done. Once this bird gets on the trail of an insect it does not give up. I’ve seen them do some fantastic acrobatics, and they can even hover. I’ve also seen them just recently swoop in and snatch up a dragonfly that I was all ready to take a photo of. Thanks kingbird.

I’ve never seen a kingbird catch and eat a butterfly but I’d guess that they must. This mourning cloak sipping from a milkweed blossom was just a few yards from the kingbird’s tree in that previous photo, so it was apparently its lucky day. Mourning cloaks overwinter and are often seen in early spring but I was surprised to see this one when milkweeds were blooming. They mate quite early in the year though, so this one might have been the result of a months ago meeting of a male and female.

I see lots of butterflies like this eastern tiger swallowtail with wing pieces missing, so I know that birds do go after them. I can’t imagine any butterfly being fast enough to outrun a kingbird but I suppose it probably happens. I’ve learned that, like animals and birds, the best place to see butterflies is near water. This one was probing the gravel in the parking area of the pond in that first photo.

I also see more white and red admiral butterflies with torn wings than other species, but this white admiral was perfect. This is one of our most beautiful butterflies, in my opinion. Colorful and large enough to be seen from a distance. They frequent forests I know because that’s where I usually find them, but I don’t know if that makes them more or less prone to bird encounters.

The little wood satyr is one of my favorite butterflies, probably because I rarely see them. When I do see them they see me and fly a few yards away and rest in the grass. This one did just that for about a half hour before I could get a few poor shots of it. This one shows the identifying features in enough detail so maybe you’ll know when you see one. To give you a sense of scale, those are wild strawberry leaves behind it and vetch leaves under it. It’s kind of a medium size butterfly I’d say, but very hard to get a clear shot of.

I’m seeing fewer invasive yellow irises this year even though I saw lots of big seed pods on last year’s plants. I doubt fewer plants is because of anything mankind has done in this area. I think it has to do with the amazing amounts of rain we had this spring. All that rain kept the water levels in rivers and streams high for at least two months and it’s easy to see the after effects of that, especially in the aquatic plants. From what I’ve seen pickerel weed and cattail numbers are down as well. I also haven’t seen anywhere near the numbers of dragonfly exoskeletons on these plants that I did last year.

Sometimes you’ll see a man-made berm or dam near a pond that is covered with crown vetch plants. Though invasive, these plants are great at keeping soil in place, so you often find them used on hillsides beside roads and highways or near ponds. Anywhere you don’t want land to slide or be washed away, these plants are called for. And the bonus is, they’re beautiful. They’re one of my favorite weeds. Bumblebees love the flowers that are in the pea / bean family of legumes.

Swamp roses (Rosa palustris) are blooming. They aren’t very big but they’re pretty and they’re always surprising because they grow in places you’d never expect to see a rose. This is a rose that is very tolerant of wet ground and I know that the few blooming plants that grow in this spot were almost entirely underwater when the stream they grow near flooded in the spring. You can buy cultivars (Cultivated Varieties) of this rose and plant them in wet areas of your yard if you like native roses. They might look delicate but they’re nearly indestructible.

Swamp milkweed has just come into bloom. This is in my opinion our most beautiful native milkweed, worthy of any garden but never seen in one by me. The orange flowered milkweed called butterfly weed is also said to be native but I’ve never found it outside of gardens. We’re lucky to have many native milkweeds and also the dogbanes, which are in the milkweed family

One day I stood on a slight rise above a spit of land jutting out into a pool. This was a small peninsula with water on each side and in the water closest to where I stood there was a commotion going on, with much splashing and rippling. It was a common grackle, taking a bath. When it was finished this plain black bird climbed up onto this beaver stump and just blossomed like a flower, right before my eyes. I have no other way to describe it. All of the sudden there was color all over its body. I’ve seen other birds with iridescent feathers, mallards for instance, but I’ve never seen color suddenly appear like it did on this bird. It was like it flipped a switch and lit itself up like a Christmas tree. Now that I know how beautiful these birds truly are I doubt that I’ll ever see a common grackle in the same way again.

Speaking of iridescence, this damselfly wasn’t going to be outdone. Damselflies like to perch, and that’s what this elegant spreadwing was doing when I saw it in a nearby bush. It’s a beautiful thing with amazing metallic colors all over it. I’m not sure I’ve seen one before but I’d love to see one again so I could get a better shot. Most damselflies hold their wings together over the length of their bodies but spreadwings do just what their name suggests. They like to spread out.

Years ago another blogger and I took his beautiful newly built wooden canoe into a beaver pond. We had talked back and forth in blog comments about where he could take this canoe he had spent so many hours building and I said “I know just the place.” I told him I had chosen this particular pond because I knew it must have orchids in it. “I can just feel it” I told him, “all the signs are there.” Well, it turned out the water was only about six inches deep and I shuddered every time that beautiful canoe slid over a stump or rock. And we never did see any orchids. So one day last week, now about ten years later, I walked down the road near the pond and there were countless rose pagonia orchids, so close I could get photos with a cell phone. This is one of our most beautiful native orchids and I was stunned to be so close to them. Isn’t nature a jokester I thought as I remembered that canoe trip ten years ago. Jim, if you’re reading this here are the orchids I said I knew must be growing in that pond. Sorry it took so long to find them!

I hope this post shows that water is life. If you’d like to see life in action just go to your local pond and wait. You won’t have to wait long. Once the critters get used to your being there the place will hum with activity. I’ve seen many people sitting in lawn chairs at this particular spot, all just watching life unfold.

I meant to do my work today, but a brown bird sang in the apple tree, and a butterfly flitted across the field, and all the leaves were calling. ~Richard le Gallienn

Thanks for coming by.

https://nhgardensolutions.wordpress.com/2025/07/12/by-a-pond-7/

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