wilddallas's Journal

Scouted 5 park locations today in the Mesquite area near highway 80.

Started at Florence and Vanston Parks off Oates. No sign of crayfish or recurring water at either location.

Proceeded West to the Eastfield Community College Campus. Varied and permanent looking terrain that would generally support multiple species of crayfish proved fruitless. Definitely worth checking again.

Moving back East I stopped at McKenzie park adjacent to McKenzie elementary school where three specimens two live and one dead were collected and posted this evening. The area sampled was a culvert alternating between concrete and hard clay lining with no major waterways marked on Google maps.

Lastly, after heading south some ways on Peach tree road we collected two other specimens in another hard clay lined drainage just North of Galloway park. There was obvious signs of long term burrowing crayfish populations..

For some additional flavor and mental record I have decided to keep a journal about our Crayfish sampling activities.

7/25 - Lippit Branch at Lochwood Park

This evening in the wake of a small rain on 7/24 a companion and I sampled the Lippit Branch of WRC that runs through Lochwood Park. A relatively narrow stretch of Limestone bottom creek largely devoid of silt some quarter mile long. The area easily yielded four adult Crayfish all of which were collected from under large cobble. Four adults: two Male and two Female all showing signs of being a species other than Clarkii. Not to say Clarkii are undesirable necessarily just less interesting to the Author. Today was a positive outcome after a few recent scouting trips to other areas that exhibited poor water quality.

7/24 - Cottonwood Creek

After great success sampling the main branch of WRC running beneath I-635 adjacent to Park Central Drive I decided to head East to Cottonwood Creek, the next major waterway running beneath 635. Disappointingly, the stretch we explored running from Forest Lane all the way North to Midpark exhibited very little, or basically zero signs of invertebrate life period. Fish species and spawning activity seemed normal: Greensunfish, Central Stonerollers, shiners, Bass and their various fry all seemed in normal levels. Common life that seemed to be missing altogether were the majority of "under rock" type life: Scuds, hellgramites, pondsnails all seemed non existent. A handful of dragonfly and or damsel fly nymphs were found but in much smaller quantities than our experience dictates should be normal. An important note I should add is that all the water we observed in this branch exhibited an artificial blue green color similar to that created by the chemical dying agents occasionally used on private ponds/golfcourses. The color change did not appear to be associated with a fertilizer induced algae bloom which was the only "natural" cause this wanna be biologist could think of. There were a half dozen or so permanent looking groundwater seeps/springs that i will later come and test later to compare with the main confluences water quality.