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New find



Well, I finally made it down to the stream I was asking about in my 
question on collecting methods. It should provide some interesting 
things. In my short survey of the small section that I could get to, I 
found a variety of habitats. There were a few deeper pools (over two 
feet deep), some riffles, and some areas that were filled with leaf 
litter. I saw at least three different looking kinds of fish but had no 
means to catch them, there was a school that must have had hundreds of 
"shiners" (they were silver fish that occasionally displayed flashes of 
silver when they turned their bodies at an angle). I saw one fish on the 
bottom that was way too quick for me to be sure what it looked like, but 
it appeared to have large pectorals that it was resting on. This was the 
largest fish I saw at around 4 or 5 inches. One area that caught my 
attention was a dam of sorts of big rocks. Water barely seeped through 
there into a pool with a sandy bottom. This pool contained the large 
school of shiners, but they stayed over near the far bank in a deeper 
area. Upstream of this dam the water was still and looked rather 
stagnant at the surface. It was choked with leaves to the point that I 
did not have any idea how deep it was. Anyone think there might be fish 
in that part? I'm sure there are leaches (sp?), and I really hate those 
things...Anyhow, thought I'd share what I found so far. I also just got 
accepted as a volunteer at the Louisville Zoo. I will be working in the 
HerpAquarium, so I look forward to trying to get them to set up some 
native displays ;) The Curator of Ectotherms was asking me if the NFC 
did any work with freshwater mussels. Turns out that here in the 
Southeast we are home to the most species of freshwater mussels of any 
place in the world! He also mentioned that many of these are endangered 
or threatened and in need of someone to champion their cause. If anyone 
knows of anything neat in Southern Indiana (near Louisville) to collect, 
let me know so I can look for it.

Scott McLaughlin

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