One man’s swamp, another man’s oasis

Jeanne and Mike Decker's dream home sits on the Goochland side of the Goochland-Henrico line, looking out over 60 acres of wetlands where Tuckahoe Creek snakes by.

To many in the Richmond area, Tuckahoe Creek is that swamp you drive across on River Road or Patterson Avenue on the way to or from somewhere else. The Deckers know better. From two leather chairs in their living room, binoculars and identification books at the ready, they are treated daily to as dramatic and dynamic a display of nature's vigor as any you could hope to find in a metropolitan area of 1 million people.

"It's like an aquarium sitting here," said Jeanne Decker.

Across the swamp we watched great blue herons awaken, fly off and return with twigs to fortify the nest. Others went in search of breakfast, maybe sunfish or small bass, in the creek below. A hawk came and went from its nest in the same tree as the herons. Mike Decker showed me pictures he took of four deer skirting a beaver dam in the swamp recently. He and his wife also have seen - and this is a partial list - bobcats, bald eagles, river otters, osprey, innumerable songbirds, wood ducks, mallards, geese, and even a great-horned owl and a snowy egret - all in the less than two years they've lived here.

Wetlands and their associated borderlands are considered the most biologically diverse of all ecosystems, which means the Deckers wake up every morning to what could very well be Richmond's most fertile and fecund 60 acres.

Tuckahoe Creek is the March entry in my monthly series on overlooked urban oases in the Richmond region. It's different than the others in that there is no public access anywhere along its course, as far as I know. I've driven up and down the creek's meandering path, poking my head into neighborhoods and probably trespassing a few times, but I never found a good place to sit and observe the show.

Luckily, the Deckers were kind enough to let me watch from their living room. Mike said they'll sometimes sit for hours in the evening, watching the drama unfold.

"It's one of those things where you must be present to win," he said. "You know nature, sometimes there's a lot going on; sometimes there's not much."

On the morning I visited, Jeanne wasn't overly impressed with the activity level. Still, I saw a red-headed woodpecker, dozens of ducks and geese, and watched the herons and hawk share nesting space in a pine tree. That seemed strange to me, those two species living so close, so I called VCU professor and bird expert Bob Reilly for an explanation.

"I can't say I've seen much of that kind of thing, but I don't think there's really anything to prevent it," he said. "I don't think the hawk is that much of a threat to the herons. If it was, they wouldn't tolerate it. The great blue herons are pretty good defenders. To some extent, the hawk might get a little bit harassed by the herons."

The nest tree, a giant long-leafed pine, stood on the opposite bank, in an area Mike Decker said is owned by Henrico County. But because it's in the floodplain and adjacent to a wetland there's little they could do with it if they wanted to.

"Any wetland itself [is important], and then the deciduous borders, the riparian borders, the forest adjacent, those are you're most productive areas from the standpoint of the birds and other wildlife," Reilly said. "Birds come out into the wetlands to feed, but then they go back into the buffer area to build nests and raise young and they count on thick understory in there to protect and shield the young."

A wetland is only half the story. A place like the marsh on Tuckahoe Creek can't support nearly the diversity of wildlife without a surrounding buffer.

It's probably a good thing, then, that many of the thousands that drive over it every day see Tuckahoe Creek as an uninviting swamp. If everyone knew what takes place along the creek and its banks, they'd all want living rooms with windows that feel like aquarium glass - and then the show would be gone.