the constant catbird and a snail tale

A Gray Catbird hunts regularly all around the porch; it literally pops out every few minutes to look for insects. There might be more than one bird; impossible to tell. A more certain conclusion: there must be a catbird nest in the bushes somewhere nearby with hungry mouths to feed.

A small feeding flock consisting of Carolina Wrens, Common Yellowthroats, a Downy Woodpecker, a few B-c Chickadees and a Yellow Warbler was working the marsh edge this morning. The Purple Martin colony has at least doubled in size as the young birds emerge from their gourd nests. How these fledglings step out of their nest holes one day and manage to soar through the air on their first try is one of the mysteries of bird life.

I recently referred to all the small snails on the saltmarsh as Mud Snails but Mike Bottini points out that there are actually two species. Melampus bidentata, the Salt Marsh Snail, is an air breather and climbs up the marsh grass stems at high tide while the true Mud Snails (Ilyanassa obsoleta) are the ones that carpet muddy bottoms and are exposed in big numbers at low tide.

Eric Salzman