I don't believe I saw any crayfish bits, but then I saw no evidence of crays in the mainstem at all. As far as the Corbicula go- there were white bony bits which may have been clamshell, and there were brown papery bits which may have been the proteinaceous layer, but I couldn't say for sure. Now that I think about it, there were also some fibrous, stem-like things which were probably plant parts, so muskrat sounds like a good fit.

If I'd only brought a baggy I could have collected some and looked at it under a scope. Ah well.

Oh, here's the only unionid I saw:





And a dead studfish for scale:



Anyone recognize it? I saw two (dead) individuals, both about this size (~2").

If I was held at gun point and an ID was demanded, I'd go Elliptio arctata, the delicate spike.

http://www.biosci.oh...tio_arctata.htm

But making an ID from a photograph of a mussel from Alabama is about as spot on as making an ID of a Notropis in Tennessee from 20 feet away

Todd

In all likelyhood i'm headed down there this friday. Check your gazeer Newt and tell me where you were at exactly. Where i generally go is on page 27, 7B, upstream of where 273 crosses the Little River. Oddly the park i mentioned is not noted on my gazeer.

Casper

Casper- I went down to Canyon Mouth park, but they had a $3 use fee and I had no cash. The places I accessed the river were at the AL-35 bridge, and slightly downstream at the end of Lower Two-Mile Trail (the trail is actually much less than two miles long, but is vertical enough to feel like two miles). Both sites are on page 27, 7A. I also visited Bear Creek at the bridge on Little River Canyon Scenic Drive (AL-176 in the gazzetteer, but I believe the road signs said AL-179).

Todd- Thanks for the attempt; I figured it was a long shot.

Oh yea...
wow, no wonder you did not see much diversity. But it was spectacular was it not? That is awesome up there and man it is way down for a climb. Dangerous.
To really see diversity you need to get down to where 273 crosses the Little and then work your way upstream via the park and finally the riverside trails.
I'm set for friday and looking forward to revisiting one of the better sites in this area.
I will do a posti when i get back.



3 bucks eh..., we use to park right at the 273 bridge but a landowner has fenced it. But i'm sure there are several freebie spots with minimal trespassing.

Last Friday Rob and i headed south to the Little River. The park is called The Little River Canyon MOUTH park and yes it is 3 bucks per carload, tho no one was at the entrance to take the cash. Not many people were enjoying the park on such a pretty day but the weekends can be crazy crowded with the Latino sock workers from the surrounding textile mills. The weather had cooled a wee bit from the summer's burning heat of the weeks prior and actually the water felt warmer than the air several times when we walked along the shallows.

Water flow was to a bare minimum, maybe reduced to about 1' deep and 2 or 3' wide in some of the channeled riffle runs. Rain had fallen on Lookout Mountain the day before but no evidence of it was seen in volume or turbidity. Visibility was murky in someplaces and only 6 feet at best but oddly in some of the pools we could see 15 feet straight down.

Immediatly upon entering at a back water pool i observed schools of shiners though they were not in any kind of breeding color. I suspect the first ones were Blue Shiners from their vegetated, sandy backwater habitat and their lateral stripe running into an elongated caudal spot. A couple other species were with them but i really have no idea what they were. Perhaps Burrhead or Coosas. Unless i see high males i'm often at a loss.

All and all we counted 21 species we knew and 4 or 5 we were unsure of, and several more complete unknowns.
Sunfish: Redbreast, Bluegill, Green, Croppie, Coosa Bass and Largemouth bass. Maybe Smallmouth or Spotted.
Channel Cats, Longnose Gar, Drum.
Hogsuckers, Stonerollers, 2 species of Redhorse at least, Blacktail and Spotted. Lots of Redhorses and Suckers.
Southern Studfish in the warm shallows close to the banks. Didnt crook my neck looking for Gambusia.
Shiners: Alabama, Tricolor, Blue and several unknowns. Stripes.
Darters: Bronze, Mobile Logperch, Speckled, Greenbreast and lots of juvi mystery Darters... either Blackbanded or perhaps Muscadine? Help me learn.

What i also expected to see were Longear and Shadow Bass. Surely iv'e seen them here before.

Several places offered memorable viewings. One was in a deep bouldered pool. The light was streaming down from overhead and descending into the depths as shadowed shimmering pulsing rays. Below circled and ran Drum and Redhorse. A group of Croppie were stairstep staggered down along a vertical submerged and broken limbed tree. We dove down and held to the branches to get an eye on the shimmery Croppie, White or Black i know not, but they were beautiful with their elongated dorsal and ventral angel fins. As we took turns diving down a 4' Longnose Gar cruised by and Rob swam alongside for several passes before the Gar headed to another pool evading Rob's ever nearing gaze. While i snorkeled through the boulder crevases Rob removed his wetsuit and climbed to the highest boulder and lept off with a yippee yell and plunged deep into the clear pool. It was a fine day.

Rob pointed out that i had been overlooking the Green Sunnies. Sure enough i quickly learned they were hiding in the shadowed cracks and crevases along the river's edges. A little wiggle of a stick's end would lure them out and how fine they were marked. Handsome but content to hide their beauty in the shadows unless you happened to be a mindless minnow drifting by. And minnows galore, clouds of them at several locations. Schools moving as one with Bass and Sunfish darting in as opportunity presented itself. There was not a shortage this year in minnow mass and the big fish were noting it.

Rob also pointed out small Darters, just and inch or a bit longer snaking along the surface of rocks. A very odd manner of movement. Almost slinky. Hundreds of them scattered along the rocky edges of the quiet flows. Sometimes they would act like Percina, reminding me of the Blackbandeds or the Bridal Darters i see in the Conasauga. But these were small and no adults of either specie were seen, though consistently looked for. I have noted this late in the year, at several sites i have snorkeled, that the quanity of fish seems to be diminished. I'm not sure of this but it seems consistant. However there were plenty of these Darters and many schools of young Shiners. The riffle runs is what seemed to lack the specie diversity and quanity i'm use to observing here.

During a open book picnic lunch we talked to a few folks who inquired of our snorkeling activity. One group was from Atlanta and committed to returning with their snorkel gear. They pointed out several large Gar nosing their long snouts out of the water porpoise style. I'm seeing more folks with masks now and finding more lost gear in downstream pools. It is fun and people seem genuinely interested when your showing them pictures or while describing recent views. This would be a good time to give them a card with NANFA's website on it. I suspect most folks cant recall the letters N A N F A dot org.

Yellow jackets were buzzing us pretty good and i had been regularily wiping my chin of sardine drippings when i picked the waded oily paper towel back up. My thumb still tingles from that yeow sting. At least it was not my lip thankfully. Rob got into something along the wooded bank and grew a big red rash behind his ear. We took a pic of our damages, swollen thumb next to a reddened ear, but he is on his way back to St. Louis and a Master's degree and the digital image is on his camera chip, that is, if you wanted to see our day's pain in color.

The sun was getting low and i hurridly caught a Logperch, 3 of the little mystery Darters and ran my net though a school of Shiners in hopes of growing them out and iding them in the studio glass. I figure we spent about 5 hours in the river heading upstream and then drifting back to pools below the park. Probably 6 or 7 hours alltogether at the site.

Getting rinsed off and loaded up we headed back across the ridge, overlooked DeSota Falls from the high bridge and ran across the flat of the mountain. A quick u-turn bought us a 50 lb bag of Sand Mountain red potatoes for 12 bucks and all the figs we could pick and eat. They were good! After settling up, down into the Ft. Payne valley and found a Mexican restaurant on the north end of town that used no english. My feeble attempts at 2nd grade spanish bought me a piece of fluffy flat crusty bread covered with fresh avacado, roasted chicken, bologna, braised beef pieces, a slathering of fruit jam, ( how odd is that? ), 2 cheeses, lettuce, cilantro, herbs and sliced tomato smoothed over with some kind of creamy sauce. A cold bottle of espanol branded orange soda and a creme pastry from the wall sized, under glass display case. The young lady brought us 3 kinds of salsa, a plate of pickled peppers and vegetables and a basket of dark brown thick crunchy chips. Pretty tasty after a full day drifting in a cool river. Studying the menu i was finally able to cipher some of the ingredients and i think the beef pieces were beef tongue!

We got back to Rob's parents, divided the potatoes and watched a bit of the spectacular opening of the 08 olympics.

Sunday afternoon Rob visited the house, we snorkeled the cement pond, seined South Chickamauga Creek and cooked up the last of the Conasauga Drum.

Fine weekend. Rob had helped me with the 98 NANFA gathering here in Chattanooga. He is quite a bit younger than me but we have enjoyed each other's company snorkeling, camping and hunting mushrooms. One summer he helped me remodel our home on Blue Fish Ridge. He is getting his masters in Bio-Ethics in St. Louis. A fine person to spend time with.

I've tried 3 times with different settings to get a pic of this darter. Help Mr. Uland.

Maybe this will work as an id aid. If not i will try again later.

Yeah Casp, I don't know what that is by the photo. I had a better chance at a guess with Nathan's mussel

Dave, are any of the newly described muscadine darters up in the Little River? I don't remember seeing that, and I don't think the blackside darters are there either.

With what I have, I'd go blackbanded on those Capser until there's better info.

Todd

I don't know how I missed this thread up till now. I've gotta slow down my index skimming.
That water snake eating the frog is an outstanding photo! Very cool. What struck me strange about that scenario was the fact that the snake was still holding on to the pickeral frog. I had to do a double take to be sure it wasn't a leopard frog. I once conducted experiments [for fun] and found garters, northern waters and even a hognose snake would immediately reject a pickeral frog and then show obvious, dramatic signs of discomfort including gaping and rubbing of the mouth on the ground. None ever attacked a pickeral frog a second time.
Did you see the snake actually swallow the frog?
[Sorry for drifting off topic but I found it very interesting and believe others will as well].

I did not see the snake swallow the frog; he retreated under a rock after a few minutes of letting me photograph him. It is possible he ended up rejecting the frog, but it is also quite possible that our southern pickerels are more palatable or our watersnakes have stronger bellies. I have seen midland watersnakes prey on juvenile pickerels here in middle TN; both species are abundant in upland wetlands and small streams here.

There may be a parallel with some of the western garters and newts. Dfferent populations of garters have strongly varying reactions to newt toxins; some experience high mortality when eating newts, others usually experience several minutes or hours of paralysis after eating newts, and some show little to no effect. Snakes from the latter two population types exploit newts, which are often abundant in their habitats.

The whole pickerel frog toxicity subject is one which doesn't seem to have been much studied; anecdotes are all I've seen. It would be interesting to run some more comprehensive experiments.

Casper,

I checked my stack o' books here at lunch. By elimination according to Boschung & Mayden and Mettee et al, you've got blackbanded darters there.

My exploration here has me real interested in seeing the coal darter, P. brevicauda now. I think there's gonna need to be a Darter Party at 32-34N and 85-87W next May when I'm done with this Fellowship.

Todd

The whole pickerel frog toxicity subject is one which doesn't seem to have been much studied; anecdotes are all I've seen. It would be interesting to run some more comprehensive experiments.

Send me a few of your pickeral frogs and I'll test 'em out on some yankee snakes.

Send me a few of your pickeral frogs and I'll test 'em out on some yankee snakes.

Ha! Actually, I'm set to start grad school next fall and I haven't got a thesis lined up yet; maybe I'll get you to send me some Yankee frogs and snakes.

Sounds like you had a great trip, Casper. Next time I'm down in NE Alabammy I'll have to try the lower Little.

this talk about a pickerel frog, yes i remember they are toxic according to books. but when i was learning about frogs years ago it was hard for me to tell a pickerel from a leopard. for sure is it a pickerel? if so what are the key markings you are focused on?

thanks todd, the peterson's said it was possible for a muscadine but i hear you on the black banded. the odd thing was their behavior. the first ones i encountered were slithering over rocks, snakish. ive never seen black bandeds do that. these were small tho, and the ones i caught and bad photoed are not the ones that were "slithering". but they appeared to me to be the same while snorkeling.
i will try for a better photo. the 3 are doing well in my planted 29. 2 of the 6 small shiners survived the transporting and are eating flake contently.

i will try to make it back this spring.

this talk about a pickerel frog, yes i remember they are toxic according to books. but when i was learning about frogs years ago it was hard for me to tell a pickerel from a leopard. for sure is it a pickerel? if so what are the key markings you are focused on?

It's definitely a pickerel. There are a handful of characteristics that distinguish the pickerel from the various leopard frogs:

PICKEREL: Dorsal spots large, oblong to rectangular, with irregular margins, usually in two distinct rows
LEOPARD: Dorsal spots smaller, elliptical or oval, with regular margins, scattered

PICKEREL: Dorsolateral ridge very thick and prominent, often yellowish
LEOPARD: Dorsolateral ridge smaller, not distinct in color from dorsum

PICKEREL: Distinct yellow 'flash color' present on inner surfaces of thigh, abdomen, and axilla
LEOPARD: Usually lacking flash color

PICKEREL: Snout short and blunt, typical for ranid
LEOPARD*: Snout longer, curved, slightly beak-like

*Southern Leopard only

The overall gestalt is a bit different too. Pickerels are smaller and more compact, with a slightly cobbled skin texture; leopards are a bit rangier, with smooth skin which may or may not have small warts, ridges, and other ornamentation. The bronzey ground color on this particular pickerel, while not universal for the species, is not found in southern leopards; it may, however, be found on green frogs and bullfrogs.

thanks newt, that is well put. i see your expertise. next time i can catch on of these jumpers i will study it along these lines.