This river bank is home to thousands of insects such as flies, beetles, wasps, butterflies, ants, worms, spiders, centipedes, and a whole lot more. Some animals also call it home such as birds, foxes, badgers, shrews, moles, mice, rats, mink, ferrets, hedgehogs and otters. If you cant see them here they wouldn’t be to far away. This setting is a perfect habitat for all the animals and insects listed above. It makes a perfect habitat because of the preservation of its condition down through the years. Across the river there is a thicket that has been virtually untouched by humans for many years, because of this fact animals and insects have claimed it their own. Under the thicket foxes and rabbits mice and rats and the rest have path ways through the bushes that they have made and used for years. These paths look like tunnels in the hedge, they come in all different shapes and sizes. The smaller ones would be used by the smaller animals giving them an escape route from the bigger ones that would prey on them. This perfect habitat has an abundance of food for their inhabitants, they all live off each other using the smaller animals as food. The smaller animals eat the vegetation and insects, and the insects eat each other and some may eat the leaves.

You would be surprised at how many different species would use this area, and they all use it for the same reason, the fresh running water. The water streams that line fields in the countrysides and mountain passes all give refuge to these animals, and even more animals use them as you go from one location to the next. The worlds streams and rivers are the life lines of these creatures without these they would vanish from the countryside and probably vanish completely. All of these animals and insects have a role to play whether you have noticed or not, they all offer the world cleansing and fertilisation, pollination, culling of pests and fight off unwanted insects that could damage crops and such.

The higher up the hill you travel the less chance of the rivers and streams have of being polluted, I’m not saying that they are not polluted up high I’m saying that there is a less chance of it being so. When the water is to dirty for the animals to drink they will leave the area and the area will become overgrown and the ivy and the blackberry bushes will choke the trees and kill them off.

The Destruction of the River Bank

I have come across a couple of areas like this in my travels and seen first hand what devastation this has on an area. All the animals and insects left that area except for a few insects and spiders. They all left and headed up river to where the water was cleaner. What happened here was a cow lay dead in the stream and had gone unnoticed by the farmer, or maybe he dumped it there which is probably unlikely but who is to say what happened. The carcass made the water undrinkable because of its slow current in the summer months so the animals moved on.

I use to play in this area when I was a kid and the stream was a healthy one full of life, and then 15 years later a disaster happened. I am not talking about the pictures here this is a different stream completely, this one was down the fields that lay behind my grandmothers house. Not only was the rotting cow laying in the river but up stream the farmer was using the river to wash his farm equipment and spray canisters out, more less using the river as a drain. Curiosity got the better of me and I checked out where the animals went to seek refuge, I headed up stream for about a mile or so and found new tracks and pathways made by wildlife in a secluded area. Great I though I found them, It wasn’t half as nice a place as their old home from what I can remember, but it held most of the wilderness charm that they use to have. I took a look around the farm and saw that the farmer had built a metal grid over the stream and he used it for parking his farm machinery on and a hose that was attached to a pillar.

I know you may say that these are just wild animals and they can live anywhere, and that is just what the farmer said to me when I approached him about it. Me and my attitude and love for animals were not gonna stand there and take it that from him or anyone like him. He went on to say “sure you don’t even live down here you are from the city what would you know”. So I gave him the obvious response that you would expect from an Irish man that was annoyed about his childhood memory being altered unnecessarily. He persisted his claims that he was doing nothing wrong, so I showed him his dead cow that lay in the river and the state of the area that I used to call the wild as a kid. He still didn’t see the damage that he was causing. This stream runs down to a river not two miles down stream and he was reluctant to change his ways, so I reported him and he wasn’t long changing after that, he was fined I don’t know how many thousand and hasn’t said hello to my grandmother since as if it was our fault.

Pollution

Its the little streams that carry the farmers pollution to the main rivers and this is happening all over the world not only are animals depending on these rivers but in some countries so are the humans. This is effecting us as a species and effecting the well being of other species. It is not just the cleansing of the farm yards but the pesticides that the fields are being sprayed with too. The rains wash it off the crops and they run into these streams and ultimately end up in the rivers that can harm fish and other river animals. The farmers must be more careful in what they are doing because, some day soon I feel we are going to need all the fresh water we can find especially in the poorer regions.