Salt marsh, Inwood Hill park

Blue crabs live in salt marshes. They live in small holes in the ground. They don’t live in the water, but they rely on the vegetation to survive. They are extremely sensitive to changes in the environment. There are not as many Blue crabs as there were before. The more environmental change the less Blue crabs.

Salt marsh, Inwood Hill park

inwood hill salt marsh

common reed

Salt hay grass

Inwood hill salt marsh like other salt marshes is dirty. So it may not be pleasant to visit it. Most people go fishing there. If you go fishing it woudn’t matter when you went because the sea animals are there all year round. Although Inwood Hill’s salt marsh is a nice place to look you would not want to go in it.

Smooth cordgrass

Common reed is a member of the grass family. It is a very tall plant, it grows up to 15 feet high. It blooms in August, and the flowers are up to six inches high. Common reed is replacing smooth cord grass and salt hay grass, that is a bad thing because a lot of animals rely on those plants to live.

Common reed is taking over the salt marshes, and to preserve them people are adding more smooth cordgrass.

Salt hay grass is another plant that relies on coastal salt marsh ecosystem to survive. It grows in deeper parts of the marsh. Salt hay grass grows to be one to two feet high. It is just like the smooth cord grass, very important to the ecosystem. Animals rely on the salt hay grass as food.

Smooth cord grass is found in coastal salt marshes. A lot of animals that live in salt marshes feed on cordgrass. Cord grass is a pollution filter, that means that it filters out the pollution so it does not get to the rest of the salt marsh. When people try to restore salt marshes the first thing they do is put more cord grass in the water. Cord grass is an important part of the salt marsh ecosystem.

sparrow

The salt marsh sparrow is a bird. Like other birds it has wings. Its stomach feathers are white and its back feathers are brown with black streaks. Salt marsh sparrows look like other sparrows.

Saltmarsh sparrows live in salt marshes. They live in nests on the trees in the saltmarsh. They are small, about the size of a person's palm. They are found in saltmarshes around america. Saltmarsh sparrows, like most other birds, migrate along the atlantic coast.

Grass Shrimp

Salt marsh sparrows don’t eat much food. They eat seeds that are in plants or on the ground. They mostly eat insects. Some insects they eat are: caterpillars, grasshoppers and wasps. Sparrows really enjoy insects.

Grass shrimp look a lot like shrimp. They are a clear, and their eyes are big black dots, compared to their head. Grass shrimp is a type of shrimp.

Grass shrimp live in salt marshes. They live in all parts of salt marshes. Mostly in the parts nearer to the shore. They tend to live in large groups. Grass shrimp, mostly, live in salt marshes.

Blue crabs

Grass shrimp have less predators than they have prey. Although Grass shrimp don’t have many predators, one main predator is meiofauna. While they are molting they will eat anything including their own exoskeleton. During other times they eat phytoplankton. Grass shrimp eat a wide range of food.

Blue crabs have many attributes that you can see from just looking at them. One of them is the color of their shell. Like other crabs they have four claws. They are a little bit bigger than a tea cup. Blue crabs are very small and are also very interesting.

Humans are Blue crabs biggest predators. Humans have caused decrease in their habitat. Birds eat blue crab larva. Egrets eat larger blue crab. Blue crabs have a lot of predators.