The Bio Blitz At The Walls Of Jericho - We Made It In & Out!

It's been raining and thunderstorming off and on for the past two days, but we were lucky today. I went with four students to join the Bio Blitz along Hurricane Creek in the Walls of Jericho tract, now part of the Forever Wild land conservancy system in Alabama. We started at the hiking trail parking lot along Highway 79, not quite 2 km south of the TN border. We were the first to arrive, pretty much; I thought we were running late. We loaded up and hiked down the 2.5 miles to the base camp site, down some steep terrain on a reasonably good trail. I was carrying a 30 pound frame pack, just enough to make some of the hairpin turns dicey on a rain-soaked trail. The students were much less burdened, except that they carried the two seine nets and plastic bucket.

The trail crosses a shallow ford at Hurricane Creek. It's posted with warnings to hikers that if you cross to the other side, sudden rains can cause the creek to rise and cut you off from the trail back to the lot. We stopped there and began to seine, since we knew it was only about 200 meters from the Base Camp.


The first photo-graph shows three of the students in Hurricane Creek, with the mouth of Turkey Creek in the background. The water was very clear, fairly cold (16 deg. C) with a TDS of 124 ppm (high) and pH of 8.0. There's a lot of limestone karst geology in this drainage. Five minutes after this photo was taken, we had caught 2 flame chubs and an Endangered Palezone shiner in the mouth of Turkey Creek. That made the day right there... There was lots of fog blowing down the creek, you can see it in the picture.

The second picture shows the Base Camp later in the afternoon after some more participants had made it down the ridge. The guy on the right talking on the walkie talkie is Nick Sharp, the one full-time employee and manager of the property. Nick had just driven down in his state truck with a generator, tables and chairs for researchers to examine what they find over the weekend.


By mid-afternoon we were ready to leave, ahead of the approach-ing band of heavy rainstorms. In truth we weren't looking forward to hiking back up with wet nets, and luckily Nick offered to drive us back. The third photo shows my four students, from left to right: Jennifer, Leigh, Sandi and Daniel. They're all glowing at the thought of driving out.

Here's our species list, off the top of my head. We didn't find as much as I'd thought we would, but it makes up in quality:

Palezone Shiner, Notropis albizonatus (first in this creek, I think)
Flame Chub, Hemitremia flammea (definitely a first in this creek)
Telescope Shiner, Notropis telescopus (very common)
Striped Shiner, Luxilus chrysocephalus (very common)
Scarlet Shiner, Lythrurus fasciolaris (very common)
Bluntnose Minnow, Pimephales notatus
Stoneroller, Campostoma oligolepis
Blacknose Dace, Rhinichthys atratulus
Creek Chub, Semotilus atromaculatus (two big, robust individuals)
Banded Sculpin, Cottus carolinae (large, healthy specimens)
Tennessee Snubnose Darter, Etheostoma simoterum
Banded Darter, Eth. zonale
Redline Darter, Eth. rufilineatum (most common darter, interestingly)

The gaps in my expectations are finding no centrarchids, and no killifish, especially Northern Studfish which is common in other tributaries of the Paint Rock River. Nick told us that he has seen redhorse suckers, which are usually only caught with an electroshock rig that I don't own. Nick also invited us back anytime, since he's trying to make a full inventory of the tract's biodiversity. If other people in NANFA are up for a serious in-country trip, let me know, we could camp at the site of the Base Camp. What I noticed about this creek is that it shows few signs of human degradation, not even Asiatic Clams. For a population study of flame chubs, in particular, this could be a good creek, since we easily found more than one which is very different from other sites where you're lucky to find one in two hours' work. Hmmmm.........