May 22, 2004
Lots of 'Good' Bugs in Byrne Creek Today
Yumi and I checked the Byrne Creek habitat today, and just after we arrived, the water from the heavy rain stopped spilling over into the overflow pond. As the pools in the spillway began shrinking we noticed they were crawling with mayfly nymphs. It was amazing, there were hundreds upon thousands of them!
We called our buddy bug lover Maho, and she came down and joined us. We were scooping up mayfly and midge larva with a small glass jar and transferring them to a bigger jar. We were scooping mayflies and baby stickleback out of the overflow pond with a little aquarium net. It was astounding.
The poor little bugs were being left high and dry as the pools in the spillway evaporated.
Dunno where they all came from, but it might be interesting to do a sample bug count at a location or two ASAP for interest's sake. We also saw many caddisfly larva below the footbridge....
We're talking a lot of Category 1 Pollution Intolerant bugs here! We also think one of the bugs we got was a riffle beetle, which is also Category 1.
