To Puddle or Not To Puddle

By Anita Sanchez

Ah, spring! The time of birds singing, wild­flow­ers bloom­ing … and mud puddles.

I used to think of mud pud­dles as the price we pay for warmer weath­er. Wet shoes and mud­dy boots seem a small mat­ter, as long as warm sun­shine comes along with them. Pud­dles are fun for kids to splash in, but what else could a mud pud­dle pos­si­bly be good for?

One day I hap­pened to notice a pud­dle on the edge of a dirt road. The water of the pud­dle appeared to be mov­ing in some strange way, with rip­pling wavelets like a minia­ture ocean. On clos­er inspec­tion I dis­cov­ered it was filled with wrig­gling black tad­poles, each about half-inch long. And hop­ping around the mar­gins of the pud­dle were hordes of lit­tle toads, so tiny you could fit sev­er­al of them on a quarter.

Toads lay eggs in shal­low pools, and the result­ing tad­poles zip through the process of meta­mor­pho­sis. The jour­ney from egg to adult can take some species of frogs two years, but toads do it all in about 30 days. The toads have no time to waste: they have to get a move on before their pud­dle dries up and leaves them high and dry.

I start­ed won­der­ing what else pud­dles were good for. Turns out pud­dles have all sorts of uses. They’re a swim­ming pool, bath­tub, drink­ing foun­tain, and hard­ware store for dozens of species of animals.

On a hot sum­mer day, birds dive into a pud­dle like kids play­ing around in the neigh­bor­hood pool. Do wild ani­mals ever just kick back and have a lit­tle fun? Sure­ly a robin splish­ing and splash­ing in a pud­dle seems to be enjoy­ing life. But of course all that wash­ing and sluic­ing of the feath­ers isn’t just friv­o­li­ty. Birds need to bathe their feath­ers often to keep them in peak fly­ing condition. 

Pud­dles are also a cru­cial source of home build­ing mate­ri­als for dozens of species. Mud dauber wasps roll the mud into balls, car­ry­ing it in their front legs. They then attach it to a rock or wall to craft a shel­ter for their young. Some types of mud daubers cre­ate del­i­cate struc­tures that look like minia­ture pipe organs; oth­ers just form a clump. But no mat­ter what the nest shape, the mud pro­vides a cool, safe home for their eggs.

I love to watch barn swal­lows dart and soar high over the Arbore­tum. These beau­ti­ful acro­bats seem to be crea­tures of the sky, but they’re com­plete­ly depen­dent on mud. They flit to pud­dles, grab a beakful of mud, and make a nest glued to the rafters of barns and sheds. If there’s no mud, there’ll be no baby barn swal­lows. Lack of a read­i­ly avail­able source of mud for nest build­ing is direct­ly linked to declines in barn swal­low populations.


Even but­ter­flies love pud­dles. They engage in a behav­ior called pud­dling.” I love that pud­dle” can be a verb, as in I feel like pud­dling today!” When but­ter­flies pud­dle, they land at the shal­low edges of pud­dles and rest there, slow­ly fan­ning their wings. They sip water and feed on the min­er­als found in the damp earth.

Not every pud­dle is but­ter­fly or toad-friend­ly, though. A pud­dle in a black­top dri­ve­way, with a rain­bow of oil on the water or full of leaked con­t­a­m­i­nants from cars, is no place for ani­mals to drink or kids to splash in.

So don’t be ashamed of the mud pud­dles in your yard. Own them with pride! You’re host­ing wildlife habi­tat. These days I’m much more tol­er­ant of mud­dy dri­ve­ways and sog­gy lawns. The Lan­dis Arbore­tum is one of the few pub­lic places around that is pud­dle-friend­ly: dirt roads and barn­yards are rare these days.

Have a love­ly spring, and enjoy the mud!


Spring 2017

Volume 35 , Number 2

Share this

The Latest from Landis

Mar 14, 2023

Picturing Landis through the year

Scenic Landis Arboretum just begs to be captured by photographers, professionals and amateurs alike. Enjoy... read more

Mar 14, 2023

2022 Annual Report

View or Download read more

Mar 14, 2023 | Nolan Marciniec

Re-thinking Garden Pests

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything... read more

Mar 14, 2023 | Fred Lape, founder of the George Landis Arboretum

Barn Swallows

In this poem, Arboretum founder Fred Lape calls our attention to the “commonplace” miracle of... read more

Mar 14, 2023 | Anita Sanchez

Things Are Looking Up

Tree canopy -- Anita Sanchez Long ago I worked at a nature center, leading walks... read more

Mar 14, 2023 | Laurie Freeman

S-L-O-W Birding: A Primer for Beginners

Are you considering birding? Perhaps you’ve heard that birding is a great way to enjoy... read more

News Archive