WOODS & WATERS

Get to Know Your

NEIGHBORS

Some of the springtime neighbors you might meet if you look closely: a mink and a sora rail.

MAY IS A GOOD TIME TO LOOK

BY BOB DUCHESNE

MAY IS A GOOD MONTH to meet the neighbors. That is, if your neighbors live in a swamp. Maine is wet. Don’t believe it? Go camping for a week. All that water creates a variety of wetlands, each teeming with wildlife that mostly goes unseen. Beavers, muskrats, minks and otters make a home among the fish. A multitude of birds dwell in marshes. Wetlands are breeding pits for amphibians and insects. Wetlands come in all shapes and sizes, from Moosehead Lake down to the smallest vernal pool. Vernal pools are small, forested wetlands that dry up in summer. Although vernal pools are typically smaller than one acre, so much life springs forth from them that scientists estimate the total biomass of critters emerging each spring exceeds the mass of all mammals and birds living in the surrounding area. Some animals could not exist without them. MAY IS A GOOD Spotted salamanders and blue-spotted salamanders lay their eggs in vernal pools. Wood frogs can fill a pool with eggs. Maine’s rarer species, TIME TO SEARCH such as Blanding’s turtles and ribbon snakes, require vernal pools as part of their lifecycles. After breeding, a multitude of critters walk, THE WETLANDS crawl or slither out of the pools and spread out across the land. Most are silent, so you might not be aware you have these neighbors.

NEAR YOU May is a good time to look. Marshes are especially fun this time of year. Although they may be hiding in the reeds, these neighbors are anything but quiet. A AND MEET THE chorus of spring peepers can be so loud, it’s audible from a halfmile away. Multiple species of frogs are present, all of them vocal.

NEIGHBORS. Bullfrogs, green frogs, leopard frogs and pickerel frogs may be your neighbors. Frogs are stealthy, and have interesting survival strategies.

For instance, green frogs lay eggs that taste nasty to fish.

Birds are more of your seldom-seen marsh neighbors. Rails are small, chickenlike birds that scuttle between the reeds. They are “skinny as a rail,” so they can move quietly through the dense grasses without giving away their location to predators. Of course, the birds can’t see each other either. Therefore, they spend a lot of time in May telling each other where they are, in order to avoid a territorial conflict. They’re loud.

The two common rails in Maine are Virginia rail and sora. They can be found in any grassy marsh, even in suburban neighborhoods. Bangor’s Essex Woods, next to I-95, is home to many. The marsh adjacent to the Corn Fields on the University of Maine campus is loaded with them. In May, these birds are apt to call all night. It doesn’t take long to figure out if they’re your neighbors, though you might never see them.

Marsh wrens are equally secretive, yet equally vocal. Their scratchy chatter is incessant in May, and can also go all night long. They prefer cattails to reeds, but since many marshes contain both, wrens and rails co-exist easily.

Bogs are special.

Like vernal pools, Maine’s glacial past accounts for much of their unique existence. Both are formed in natural depressions, typically created by the weight of mile-thick ice over 10,000 years ago. Unlike vernal pools, which are mostly fed by melting snow, bogs receive most of their water from rainfall. Bogs lack both inflow and outlets, trapping the water. Some are the remains of ponds that have filled in with vegetation since the last Ice Age. Others were created when sphagnum moss spread out over suitable depressions on dry land, trapping moisture and creating permanently wet conditions.

In either case, bogs build up deep mats of vegetation. Unlike vernal pools, bogs are acidic and nutrient-poor. Only specialized plants and animals survive there.

Because the growing conditions are so poor, some bog plants are carnivorous, able to capture and digest small insects. Pitcher plants, sundews and horned bladderworts are carnivorous plants found in eastern Maine’s best-known bog — the Orono Bog, adjacent to Bangor City Forest.

Black spruce and tamarack are trees adapted to growing in poor soils. In bogs, they grow so slowly that a 100-year-old tree may be no more than a few feet tall. Two Maine bird species are commonly found in bogs. Lincoln’s sparrows are rather shy, but the palm warblers living next to them aren’t.

That’s just the beginning. Lakes and ponds, rivers and streams, saltwater bays and coves all have their own denizens. The hidden life in tidal marshes is awesome. May is a good time to search the wetlands near you and meet the neighbors.

BOB DUCHESNE is a local radio personality, Maine guide, and columnist. He lives on Pushaw Lake with his wife, Sandi.