Trips This Week

I'll be going out tomorrow with Jennifer and Christian to collect more scarlet shiners and striped shiners at Limestone and Swan Creeks. Hopefully the shiner gods will smile on us and we can get a good collection with minimal effort. It has hardly rained locally for almost a month, so both creeks should still be low.

On Friday I'm launching my first foray into Lauderdale County, the northwest corner of Alabama. My list of flame chub collections has more entries from Lauderdale County than any other. There are several major creeks flowing south from Tennessee into the Tennesse, with high aquatic biodiversity that hasn't been too badly damaged yet (I think). I hope to work three sites in the upper Little Cypress Creek system, beginning just south of the Tennessee line. The first site will be Olive Spring, from which hundreds of flame chubs were taken in 7 collections in 1974. I have no idea why so many were taken, hopefully there are still some left. From there we'll work south closer to Zip City, visiting 2 other sites along Little Cypress Creek. This will be an all-day trip from Huntsville.

I also talked to Kevin today who is working on producing high-quality maps for this project. He's set up several maps that show the historic sites, using a numbered system based on the spreadsheet I've been working for. The one section he showed me from Lauderdale County is amazing to see, with many sites along the Natchez Trace Parkway. We might hit some of those sites next week.