Tour Stop 8: Mosquito Ditch
From our best educated guess, this property is the result of fity years of growth and succession. We base this on the types of vegetation and the growth stages they are in at present. The little history we know tells us that this was once a farmers field. Livestock had grazed what appears to have been a wet meadow. The ditch was most likely a watering area for the animals that grazed here. Another possibility is that this ditch was created by the mosquito commission in the sixties. Hopefully we will get a better perspective of the history of the property in the future — stay tuned.
This ditch and the one to the west of the footpath both connect to the Silver brook. We have found them to be biologically fruitful. Spotted, snapping and wood turtles have all been seen in the ditch at one time or another. The Wood turtle (Clemmys insulpta) is a state threatened animal. This one species alone has raised the regulatory status of our property from intermediate to exceptional resource value.
Mud minnow and red-finned pickeral.
Two species of fish have been noted in the streams and the ditches — red-finned pickeral and the mudminnow. Both these species help balance the ecological scales by consumming many species of invertebrates (i.e. mosquito and midge larvae ) as well as being predators of frog eggs and tadpoles. When spring brings heavy rains the ditches may sometimes overflow and connect with our vernal ponds. These hydrologic pathways act as highways for these two fish species to travel. Once in the ponds they can wreck havoc to our amphibian populations trying to fullfill the breeding portion of their life histories. If they don't make it back to the streams before the ponds dry up they to will die and nothing is gained on either side of the ecologicic scale.