Cattails - how animals use cattails - Cover Story

Ranger Rick, April, 1994 by Deborah Churchman

Cattails are neat plants. More than that, they make neat neighborhoods - for lots of wildlife neighbors.

Check for cattails growing in slow-moving or still water near you - a marsh, a pond, a wet ditch, or along a river bank. Find some? Let's explore.

Over here a grasshopper just landed on the "cat's tail" - that hot-dog-shaped part near the top of a stalk (see photo, left). The hard, velvety-brown cat's tail is crammed full of seeds - up to 200,000 of them!

During early summer, the cat's tail was green. As the tiny seeds grew inside, the tail turned brown. Then, by late winter, the tail began to break apart (below). Those white fluffs then blew away in the wind, carrying the plant's seeds to new places.

Wherever there are cattails, there's food. Roots, shoots, and seeds attract plant-eating animals. Those animals attract animals that eat the eaters!

Many animals go to the cattail supermarket's "salad bar." Ducks sometimes eat the tiny seeds. Canada geese do too. The geese also chomp on the plants' new shoots and underwater roots.

And at the end of winter, even dried cattail leaves are good food for this moose (left). See the cattail fluff on his face?

This short-tailed weasel (right) has caught and killed a bird in the "meat section" of the cattail supermarket.

All year long, muskrats gnaw on cattail roots. They also use cattail leaves - but usually not for eating. See that pile of cattail leaves and stalks below? The muskrat uses them to build a lodge to keep itself safe from enemies. The lodge rises about four feet (1.3 m) above the water, and it looks a bit like a beaver lodge.

All dressed up in his mating colors, a red-winged blackbird (above) shows off his flashy shoulder patches. Here at the top of a cattail stalk he shouts out his song: kong-ka-REEE! The song acts as an ad, telling female redwings that he'd like to mate. It also warns other male redwings to stay away from his territory.

Once a pair of redwings has mated, the birds gather reeds, cattail leaves, and other plants and build a cup-shaped nest.

Redwings are found all across the United States. But yellow-headed blackbirds (right) live mostly in the West.

These birds are cousins of the redwings, and they too make their homes in cattail marshes. The male makes a squeaky-high song of pretty notes and clacking sounds: klee klee klee kokow-w-w. If he's lucky, a female may hear it and want to be his mate. If not, he'll balance himself on the cattail plants - and keep calling away!

A marsh wren (bottom) uses cattail leaves to weave a ballshaped nest - right onto some cattail stalks. Then she collects feathers and soft cattail fluff (below) to line the inside of her nest. There she'll lay her eggs - out of sight of enemies.

The cattail marsh is a great place for wrens and other birds to raise their young. They're hidden from view among the tall plants. There's plenty of food. And there's plenty of stuff to make a nest from too.

Look what's hiding in the cattails - a sora (left). This brightbeaked bird builds its nest in a thick clump of the plants, just above the water.

The least bittern (right) also makes its nest above the marsh water - well hidden among the cattails. There it's close to its favorite foods, such as fish, frogs, tadpoles, salamanders, and water insects. Least bitterns are about the size of pigeons. And their fluffy young have big appetites!

The pied-billed grebe (below left) is another common but hard-to-find bird in a cattail marsh. Looks kind of like a duck, doesn't it? These grebes are good divers and fast swimmers, zipping after fish, insects, and other water creatures.

The grebes build their nests above the water surface, attaching them to the stalks of water plants. There the young hide, tucking themselves under a parent's tail - or peek-a-booing from the top of a parent's back.

Cattails are good homes for many snakes and turtles too. There you might find a chicken turtle like this one (left). By dipping its long neck into the still water, it can grab a plant or a fishy snack.

In the summer, a cattail marsh is full of zipping dragonflies. A dragonfly nymph (young) hatches in the marsh waters and spends most of its life there. Finally it crawls up a cattail stalk. There it splits its skin and pulls itself out (below) - an adult at last.

Lots of other insects live in and around the marshy waters of a cattail neighborhood. So do the animals that catch them, such as this chorus frog (far left). That bubble on its throat tells you what it's doing - singing its froggie song!

These are just some of the creatures that hang out in the wild world of a cattail marsh. So if you're lucky enough to live near cattails, go on down and meet your neighbors!