Silver Creek (Grouse Creek Watershed)

Not much on my radar today. So instead, here are a couple of cool pictures from Silver Creek. Silver Creek is in the Grouse Creek watershed, which is entirely in Kansas but is not really a part of any of the major basin (drains into the Ark just N. of OK line, but isn't in the Walnut, Verdigris, or Neosho). Perhaps because of this, Grouse Creek is one of the most pristine and beautiful streams in Kansas. Silver Creek is a major tributary containing a lot of biodiversity. Unusually for Kansas streams, this stream is pretty nice even in the middle of winter. I would love to get out and visit it in the summer.

Photos from NASA

If you're like me, when you think of amazing NASA images, you typically think of stuff like this:

But in reality, I think there's a lot more like this:

What is that? Well, according to NASA those are different faces of Pluto (note: not a planet) as seen through the Hubble telescope. I'm not saying they are lying or anything, but...wow. I can't tell what the heck I'm even looking at. Astronomy is kind of like using a spectrometer, and I'm honestly amazed we're able to understand anything as well as we do.

Random Horned Lizard Photo

For reasons I don't fully understand, horned lizards tolerate being held better than any other lizard I've ever seen in the wild. This pic is from last summer.

Photos of Flowers

On my computer, this pic is labeled Spiranthes vernalis (Spring Lady's Tresses), but I'm not at all sure that's correct. You can see in the blurred background additional flowers like this in the field. This was in Cherokee Co.

Another picture of the same flower.

Prickly Pear Cactus. I'm thinking about embarking on a harvesting program for these guys. They are totally edible if you get them young and get rid of the spines (most sources seem to recommend burning off the spines). The fruit is good as well.

Bush Morning Glory (I'm pretty sure). The tubers are edible and were used similar to potatoes by Native Americans.

Cottonwood Creek in Harper County

Beautiful little creek. Cottonwood Creek. There are only about 10 thousand Cottonwood Creeks in Kansas (Cottonwoods are common). This one is in Harper County, we were looking for Arkansas Darters.

Didn't actually find any Ark Darters, even though this stretch of stream seemed perfect for them, but we did find some beautiful Killifish. Also caught Red Shiners, Sand Shiners, Central Stonerollers, Green Sunfish, and Mosquitofish. All with a dip net and minimal effort (two guys working for about 30-45 minutes).

Neat wildlife outside the stream as well. This was the best shot I could get of the black damsleflies that were all over the place.

Then we found this horned catepillar running across the road. I just about wrecked the truck stopping for this guy.

And then there was the not-so-wildlife. This old tractor looked cool to me. I love the wooden blades.

Pictures

I think I'm going to start posting things here again, but primarily, those posts are going to be pictures. I'm just too busy to do much else.

Just a random flower.

I like pics that have structure in the background that isn't sharply defined. Neither the bridge nor the leaves are all that special individually, but I like them a lot in combination.

A lot of what I review at work is new housing developments. I tend to think of these things as simple designs cloned hundreds of times with slight variations in the paint. I've got to admit though, this design is definitely outside the box. Is this a smoker's getaway?

Hmmm....

I thought I had set up a post to pop up automatically yesterday. Apparently that wasn't the case. And now I can't find that post. Weird.

So, again, no post this week, but please enjoy this picture of ice frozen over a small pond to tide you over.

Unionid Mussels

One of the most imperiled classes of animals in North America are the Unionid Mussels. There are 11 species of mussels on the Kansas Threatened or Endangered species list, and there are more that are definitely in need of conservation. Historically, these species were harvested for buttons (like on your shirt), and a massive industry existed within Kansas to harvest these species out of the Arkansas River, Verdigras River, and Neosho River (to name a few). Massive water quality issues compounded the mussel's decline through the early part of the 1900. Even into the 1970s, the mussel-rich portions of Kansas waters were experiencing massive fish kills due to runoff from feedlots and poor municipal water treatment facilities. Once the Clean Water Act came along and cleaned up the water (the importance of the CWA can never be understated), the surviving mussel populations were isolated by impoundments and low-head dams. Consequently they've been slow to make any kind of comeback. This is why KDWP is propagating mussels in an effort to circumvent barriers that are isolating them. The initial results of this are quite promising, but I should really save that for another post.

Regardless, last week I went out and did a mussel survey and relocation. A temporary stream crossing will be going across the Verdigris River, and we came to insure no mussels were harmed. In particular we were looking for the Ouachita Kidneyshell Mussel (Ptychobranchus occidentalis), and we were unsuccessful in finding it. We did find shells from 13 mussels, and live individuals from 5 (about 20 individuals overall), including a couple that are fairly rare. Hope you enjoy the pics:


The Verdigris River. If you look closely, you can actually see a lot of mussel shells on the stream-bottom and on the gravel bar even in this picture. There were literally thousands of mussel shells here.



A fairly common species, the Pistolgrip (Tritogonia verrucosa).

A smaller Pistolgrip and a White Heelsplitter (Lasmigona complanata complanata).


A Threeridge (Amblema plicata plicata). I got these confused with Washboard (Megalonaias nervosa), but I guess the key is the area where the ridges begin. In a Washboard there would be distinct 'patterning' there (the overall body shape is different as well). Incidentally, the three ridges are not characteristic (more ridges will form if the animal is given enough time to grow), but they were harvested for buttons only when they were large enough to have 3 ridges. These are thick, heavy shells that would probably make a lot of buttons.


We packed all the live mussels into a bucket and moved them upstream, so that erosion caused by the stream crossing wouldn't affect them. We also found some live Pimplebacks (Quadrula pustulosa pustulosa), Mapleleaf (Quadrula quadrula), and Bleufer (Potamilus purpuratus).


I didn't really dump them all in one location, but we forgot to take pictures of us putting the live ones back in the river. This is our 'creative recreation' of the event.

Random Pics

Random snail that I can't identify along the Verdigris River.

Native mussel shells found in the Verdigris River.

American toad (we think) found in the riparian woodlands along the Verdigris River.

Cowskin Creek in southern Sedgwick County. All of the riparian areas were cleared (completely) a year ago.

Logjam Photos

I'm sure you've all been giddy with anticipation about the log jam visit. I know I was, and wow was I disappointed. These pics would have come up last week, except Blogger hates me. What logjam am I talking about? Oh, just that 3 mile one in the Neosho River a few weeks ago.

Let's get to the photoessay!

First of all, I picked a terrible day to go out there:

Literally the day before this it was almost 60 degrees and sunny, and the day I have schedule to go visit it is blowing freezing cold air from the north, snowing off and all, and below freezing all day. The next day it was sunny and 65. This is Kansas, in case you hadn't noticed. The pic above is from John Redmond Reservoir. Redmond is one of those huge Army Corps reservoirs that is filling in with silt, and messing up the river downstream. My understanding is that it probably had something to do with the log-jam being formed as well.

I stopped to grab a pic of the weather conditions, then spent about an hour trying to find the site from that map I showed the other day. Finally got there, and as I pulled up around 15 bald eagles just lifted up and took off. I tried to get my camera out, but only managed to get a few pics of a few that were sitting in trees. Actually, I'm not 100% certain they were all bald eagles, since it happened so fast. You can see that these guys are sitting just beyond the edge of my zoom ability. Probably didn't help that the camera was still on the 'baby pics' setting (click to enlarge).


As for the log jam itself: I didn't really get to see much. The whole river system was so flooded that I was limited to the road and what was left of the landing. The river is apparently in the process of cutting a new channel around the jam, and there was water everywhere. I had brought warm-weather waders, but nothing that I wanted to wear into that freezing water. Here's the best picture I could get of the logs near the landing. Apparently all that open water you see has logs just under the surface too (at least, that's what I've been told).

I tried driving to some other locations to get some other jammed areas, but the other landings were flooded even worse. In fact, I think within the past month or so the water was six feet higher than it is now. There was a line of debris in the trees at just about my height.

So that's it, unfortunately. That's a lot of large woody debris, but not as impressive as being about to walk the entire length of a 3 mile logjam. I'll have to come back when its less flooded.

At that point, I just started taking pictures of birds. Anyone know what these little guys are?


And for some reason I couldn't get the camera to focus perfectly on this gull flying around, but with the snow falling it still looks pretty cool.

The Plains Leopard Frog

A few months ago a good friend of mine noticed that his little garden pond had attracted some frogs. He ended up taking the following picture and sending it to me. As it turns out, these are Plains Leopard Frogs:


The picture is shrunk a little to fit in this space, but there are at least 5 frogs visible there (click to enlarge). The Plains Leopard Frog (Rana blairi) is named after Frank Blair, a fairly famous Texas herpetologist. Leopard frogs, in general, are present all over North America, but generally seem intolerant of pollution and habitat disturbance. There are actually several species of leopard frog, but there appears to be hybridization occurring between those species as the geographic and habitat barriers that had separated them are being removed by humans.

Leopard frogs sing for mates for a long time each year. According to Collins (1995) they may begin as early as February and continue throughout the summer. I can't think of a good way to describe their call in words...you'll just have to go find a pond and listen. The species is a water obligate, although they appear to forage on primarily terrestrial species. Habitat destruction and the widespread use of pesticides appear to be causing a wide-spread decline in this species.

I've found that garden ponds are generally readily used by amphibians as breeding sites, especially in Western Kansas where water is increasingly unavailable. My in-laws little pond (maybe 10 square feet surface area), attracts lots of Great Plains Toads that would otherwise remain hibernating through what has been an extended drought in the area. I'm sure the population density of those toads has increased dramatically since they built the pond. I wonder whether the leopard frogs will use my friend's garden pond in a similar manner. Unlike toads, which are often toxic, the Leopard frog tadpoles are highly susceptible to fish predation, but my friend doesn't keep any fish in his pond.

Photos: SETAC in Milwuakee

For some reason my pictures of catching Neosho Madtoms are not coming up on this computer, but I wanted to put some pictures up anyway. So here's some pics from my recent trip to SETAC in Milwaukee. (captions below the pic)

Yes. I'm wearing shorts in Milwaukee. In November. Has anyone heard of this whole 'climate change' thing?
This is the Milwaukee River (I think). There's a nice river-walk behind a bunch of buildings in the downtown. The first part of the week was so nice we walked along here a couple of times during lunch. Later in the week it got extremely cold and windy, so I guess we haven't gotten to the point where it is warm all year yet.

Apparently there's a duck theme to the riverwalk.

Unfortunately the closest thing we saw to an actual duck was this chair floating down the river. I also have pictures of traffic cones in the water. Beautiful.

This is recovered treasure from a sunken Spanish ship. The weight of the silver block is supposed to be so great that you can't run away with it, but there were still two guards with tasers there.

This was the beer line just before 5 30 when the open bar opened.

What? That doesn't look like a scientific conference! How'd that get in here?

Photos: October in Redbelly Snake Habitat

The key component of critical habitat for Northern Redbelly and Smooth Earth Snakes is an Oak-Hickory forest. I think this is because the soil must have been maintained for quite a while if Oak-Hickory is present, so the soil-dwelling snakes could be present.

Another big component is limestone and other rocky outcrops. Here something has made its den along an outcropping.
Permanent water and a fairly dense leaf litter layer is also important. This seepage is probably not permanent, but still adds something to the habitat.
Again, some more pics of rocks and rocky outcropping under a dense Oak-Hickory forest.

A final key ingredient is evidence for food sources. Here's a European earthworm, a primary food-source for these snakes. I also found snails and other soil-inverts at this location.


Random Bonus Picture:
Nothing to do with snakes, just a neat picture of a mushroom.