Notes About Nature: September 2013

19 September 2013

The weekend after we got back from the Smokies, Mom and Dad came to Columbia and picked Jenna, our friend Andy, and myself up and we headed to the Big Piney River south of Devil's Elbow, MO. The water was pretty chilly, but we spent a few hours snorkeling and watching the fish. The water was about 3 feet deep, but the current was quite strong. If you stayed in the current, it was surprising how fast you would end up quite a distance downstream. We saw several species of fish and a map turtle. We tried to video some of our adventure with Dad's GoPro, but we didn't quite get the quality we were hoping for. We decided to chalk this up as a learning experience with the camera. Here's a video we came up with.

This past weekend was my Grandma March's 84th birthday and my Dad and Mom hosted the party for her. It's always good to see family. Since the party was on Sunday afternoon, we all decided to kayak Saturday. We took off from the Bee Trace area at Long Branch Lake and headed north. We were hoping to see some shorebirds along the mudflats. The only shorebirds we saw were Killdeer. There were plenty of gulls, cormorants, an eagle, and many passerines. On the way to the end, Dad saw something splashing and went to investigate. He thought it was a catfish on a trot line. When he got closer, he saw that it was a turtle. The turtle was barely in the water and the rest of the line was quite a ways out of the water. This means that the turtle had been there for quite some time. We were able to free the turtle which was hooked through the shell. He was still quite feisty which is a good thing because it means that he still had energy. Here are some pictures.

Hanging by the shell

Spiny Softshell (Apalone spinifera)

Jenna holding her first Softshell Turtle

On the17th, Jenna's brother Matt and I went to look for salamanders. It had rained lightly all day, but the temperature was actually rising into the mid seventies. After a couple miles of walking in the dark, we found no salamanders. We did find a lot of small bullfrogs, some leopard frogs, and quite a few toads. Maybe we can find something this weekend.

American Toad (Anaxyrus americanus)

5 September 2013

As I alluded to in my last post, a couple weeks ago Jenna and I started making plans for a Labor Day visit to the The Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We packed the car on Wednesday night, we took off work at noon on Thursday, and we were on the road by 1:20 p.m. We didn't have a campsite reserved for Thursday night, so we stopped for the night in Cookeville, TN. After having pizza hut deliver a late supper, we hit the sack to prepare for Friday. We were the first ones at the hotel's continental breakfast, ate just a little, and were off. Only two hours to the park.

We arrived well ahead of 1:00 p.m.; the time when we could check into the campground. We took our time and stopped at several low elevation streams. It took about 5 minutes before we found our first salamander of the trip; a Seal Salamander. We then headed to Cades Cove area. A little ways into the one way loop, we ran into a traffic jam. Three rangers were making people get out of the road and there was a group of people with binoculars looking up the hill a little way. We are sure it was a bear. Since we've both seen black bear, they were using binoculars so it obviously wasn't close, and we would have had to park and walk back about a mile, we decided to not go back. We found another stream that produced copious amounts of Black-bellied Salamanders.

We got to our campsite just before 1:00 and set up camp. After eating we headed towards Clingman's Dome where we wanted to watch the sunset. Along the way, we stopped at every area that looked promising. We ended up with Black-bellied Salamanders, Shovelnose Salamanders, Seal Salamanders, Imitator Salamanders, Pygmy Salamanders, and Jordan's Salamanders. We finally made it to Clingman's Dome and made the walk to the top. It was beautiful, although sad. The hazy view and dead trees all tell stories of pollution. We went back to the parking lot and watched the sun set. There were loads of people doing the same thing.

Clingman's Dome

Sunset from Clingman's Dome

We stayed long after dark and were the last ones at the top. Our motive? Salamanders. We started looking around and found so many Imitator Salamanders that it was almost funny. They were absolutely everywhere in the rocks. We started working our way down and found a spot that looked good for our prime target. We had just about given up after finding only a few Imitator Salamanders when my light flashed across some orange. Finally!

Spring Salamander (Gyrinophilus porphyriticus)

We got back to camp, ate some supper, and went to bed. Early morning woke us with some thunder, lightning and rain on the tent. The rain fly did it's job with that little rain, so I just stayed under the muggy covers. Then came the real rain. It rained hard for over a half hour straight. One seam right above Jenna started to leak after the fly became saturated, but didn't leak to bad. Once that rain was over, we decided to put on a tarp. After some breakfast, we headed to look at some waterfalls and ended up finding a few Long-tailed Salamanders.

After lunch, we decided to go snorkeling. The water was really cold, but I had so much fun. I could do that for days on end. We saw quite a few fish including: Northern Hogsuckers, a Redhorse spp., several shiner species including a White-tailed, both Sculpin spp., and several darter species. We were really hoping to catch a glimpse of an Eastern Hellbender, but no luck.

It rained again that night, so we walked a trail around our campsite after dark in hopes of finding a Red Salamander. All we found were some Seal Salamanders and Spotted Dusky Salamanders. Since we were so tired from trying to keep in the current of the river and since we actually felt halfway clean from the swim, we went to bed and fell asleep to the patter of raindrops on the tent and the calling of a Barred Owl in the distance.

The Barred Owl was much closer Sunday morning and woke me up around 5:30. Our plan for the day was to go get some gas in Gatlinburg and then hike some trails on the north side of the park. We stopped at Maloney Point and watched the sunrise.

Sunrise from Maloney Point

Early mornings are the best. There was hardly anyone else on the roads and all of the parking lots and trails were empty. We got gas and decided to hike to Grotto Falls. There were two other people there when we got there. I decided that since we were looking for Salamanders and since the vegetation was so dense that I wasn't going to take my 400 mm lens for my camera. About halfway up the mountain, we heard the unmistakeable calls several birds including Hooded Warblers and Black-throated Blue Warblers. I started pishing a little and almost instantly had two male Hooded Warblers and a male Black-throated Blue Warbler within 10 yards, in plain view, in perfect light, and with a nice solid green background. I can't even imagine how tired Jenna was of hearing me say how much I wished I had brought my 400 mm lens. Such is life.

We finally made it to the falls. It is pretty cool because you can walk behind the waterfall. We found a few more Imitator and Black-bellied Salamanders and just enjoyed the view.

Grotto Falls

I then decided to try to take some shots from a different angle. Since I didn't have a tripod with me, I climbed down to the creek, crossed it, and used a big rock as a tripod. I had no more set my camera up, got it focused, when this boy came and sat directly in front of my camera. Jenna was dying laughing because the kid had to go so far out of his way to get down to where I was and then, out of all the large rocks down there, chose the one I was on. He moved after a bit and I could commence my photography.

A different perspective of Grotto Falls

After hiking back to the car and meeting the hoards of people coming up the trail, we continued on down the road, stopping a few times to walk around some really pretty waterfalls. Back in Gatlinburg, we met some traffic. It took us almost a half hour to go the three blocks through the dreadful town. We continued on to the Chimney Tops parking lot and decided to hike the nature trail there. We were the only ones on the trail and it was absolutely beautiful. A ways into our hike we discovered some very fresh bear scat in the trail. I looked and looked, but never could see anything. However, since the scat was literally steaming in the cool air, I feel pretty confident that the bear saw us. We were on the trail until almost dark and decided to head back to camp to eat. After eating we walked another trail and played around in a river until well after dark. Then we went back to camp and went to bed.

We woke early Monday morning and broke camp. We were well out of the park by the time the sun was coming over the hills. It was a long but uneventful drive home and it was difficult to go back to work on Tuesday morning. That said, it was a great time with my sweet wife.

Here are some more random pictures from our trip.