April 14, 2004
Byrne Creek Observations
Yesterday my wife Yumi and I made a number of interesting observations in and around Byrne Creek.
1) Dam: Someone had rolled rocks into the creek from the right-bank riprap embankment above the footbridge at the bottom of the ravine to create a dam. We rolled several of them back, but need to go again with rubber boots to get more out of the channel.
2) Turtle: We saw a fairly large turtle basking on a fallen tree extending into the overflow pond in the salmon spawning habitat. Likely about 6-7" carapace. It was covered with mud and disappeared into the water as we approached so we were not able to identify the species.
3) Ducklings: We saw a mallard Mom with a brood of 13 ducklings in the overflow pond several days ago. We spotted them several times again as low as Byrne Bridge and as high as the top end of the Southridge culvert. Unfortunately we found at least three of them dead in the sediment pond, with perhaps more assorted body parts. Update: Today we saw her again and she was down to four ducklings, illustrating a low survival rate.
You can barely make out the oil surrounding this duckling in this photo by my wife Yumi, who took all the photos in this entry.
4) Erosion: I don't know if it's our imaginations, but it seems like the side of the ravine above the path in the area of tag 519 is becoming increasingly denuded of vegetation, and that what were once tiny paths are becoming wider trails. We've seen mountain bikers up in that area several times.... Could be a good place to try some photopoint monitoring.
5) Oil: There was still an oily film entering and accumulating in the sediment pond.
6) Shrews?: We saw two tiny mammals on and near the ravine stairs. Looked like little brown fuzzballs. Body size barely over an inch, slender nose, long bare tail. They were unafraid, and made little effort to hide or run away. Could be new babies?
