Episode 25
Copyright © John Page Williams, Jr. all rights reserved.
This is John Page Williams with another reading from "Chesapeake Almanac." The month is September and this chapter is entitled "Part of the Background: Cattails and Big Cordgrass."
In the richness of a Chesapeake September, we all tend to concentrate on the marshes at the peak of their year, and the birds just beginning the migrations, and the fish feeding heavily to prepare for winter. Under these circumstances, it's easy to overlook the cattails and big cordgrass that grow on the shores of the upper Bay and the rivers. The rootstocks of both live from year to year, but the aboveground leaves and stalks are dying and turning brown now. Neither produces seeds of made a major value to waterfowl or any other wildlife, though black ducks eat some of the big cordgrass seeds.
So there they stand, tall and tough. There are acres of them, cattail heads begin to fluff out and cordgrass seeds falling. Up around the Susquehanna Flats, cattails grow in marshes along the shore. Further south, say on the Wye River or the upper Corrotoman, they make up the back edges of the marshes. From Eastern Neck Island and Southeast Creek on the Chester to West Point on the York, big cordgrass grows in huge stands along the rivers. Against the marsh flowers of late summer and the fall colors of trees, both plants fade into the background. It's easy to forget they are there.
We tend to think of marsh plants in terms of food, but they have other values, too. These two species provide habitat—that is living space—for a number of creatures in their marshes. While other plants wither and fall, they endure.
Long-billed marsh wrens, red-winged blackbirds, and black ducks have already found them useful over the summer for nesting. Most cordgrass will still have a few abandoned wren's nests close by the water's edge. They're made of grass, more or less spherical, about the size of grapefruits, and built three or four feet up the stalk from the surface of the marsh.
Secretive marsh birds like rails and bitterns also have spent the summer here. From the least bitterns in the upper river marshes to the clapper rails of the Bayshore, the cattails and the cordgrasses have served as cover and safe ground for nests. Both groups of birds are shaped and colored so they fit right in with their backgrounds. They fly very little, preferring to walk or run through the thicket of stalks. The bittern, when frightened, will stand still with its head and long beak pointing skyward, the better to merge with the strong vertical pattern of the plants around it. Through the fall, a variety of rails and bitterns will move through the Bay country, migrating south, and they, too, will use the cattails and cordgrasses as cover. thus the plants offer way stations—avian motels, as it were—that are nearly as essential to the birds as nesting and wintering habitat.
Only a few rails, red-wings, and wrens from northern marshes will spend the winter here, but they will find that the tall plants offer some shelter even in severe weather. The temperature in the thickets at night and on overcast days will always be a few degrees warmer than on the open marsh.
Muskrats, too, will use the plants. In fact, cattails and big cordgrass probably have more year-round value for them than for any other marsh animals. With the onset of fall, the two plants offer them abundant, durable building materials with good insulating qualities. Both plants make good huts. No wonder they're also highly regarded by duck hunters for brushing duck blinds.
Cattails and cordgrasses also contribute some of the muskrat's winter food. True, the aboveground stalks are pretty hard to digest, but all during the summer the plants have been storing starch in their roots to carry them through the winter. The cattails are especially good at this task. The tender parts of the rootstocks have excellent food value, so instead of cutting the stalks off of their bases and eating the hearts the muskrats now start digging as summers ends and the weather turns cool.
In a broad expanse of marsh, it's all too easy to pay no attention to specific plant species unless they serve some obvious purpose. For opportunistic animals, however, cattails and giant cordgrass are not mere background. They are the foundation of those animals' lives. We do well to remember that ours is not the only point of view.
