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Nature Notes

What types of animals and plants live at the our-reserve? What happens as the seasons change? Learn more about the critters that call central New Jersey home in our Naturalist Blog and how you and your family can get connected with the natural world with Education Director Jeff Hoagland’s Kids & Nature Blog.

Naturalist Blog

September 28, 2010

Let it Rain, Let it Rain, Let it Rain

By: Jeff Hoagland, Education Director

It has been one dry summer in these parts. Sure, rain has fallen all around us, but very little rain has fallen in our neighborhood. Less than one inch of rain fell in this part of New Jersey during the month of August. The Stony Brook, on the Watershed Reserve, has been reduced to a widely spaced series of puddles. Downstream, the Brook is gone, until it is reborn in Pennington, courtesy the Stony Brook Regional Sewage Treatment. It is here, just below Kunkel Park that treated wastewater jumpstarts the flow of water downstream.

It is an interesting time to hike along, or shall I say, in the Stony Brook. Dried up, the Brook presents a shale-tiled pathway for the curious. I laid down in the dried streambed for a fisheye view of the Brook. Doing my best to think like a fish, I could imagine how water would have riffled over a nearby series of rocks presenting some feeding opportunities. Over there, a pool beneath the undercut bank would have harbored an entire neighborhood of fish. That is all gone, for now. The drought has been a disaster for many organisms but others have prospered in its wake.

I find the shells of freshwater mussels, scattered and opened throughout the streambed. As the Brook shrank, shells protected by the depth of water were soon exposed to predation by the raccoons. Likewise, crayfish carapaces are a common ornament to many of the rocks here. As the stream receded, fish gathered in the dwindling pools, which in turn became the gathering place for great blue herons. Their whitewash is evident around the remnants of these pools. I can’t find a single fish skeleton.  This disaster has been a gift for some.

After some rain overnight, the rain barrel at my house is full, ready to water the last weeks of my vegetable garden. Below the garden, the Beden Brook is still empty. The Stony Brook too is begging for water. With a little luck, the Brook will be reborn on our Reserve soon. And while life may be sparse for a while, nature heals. There are crayfish lurking beneath some of the rocks in caves they have dug. There are fish and insects in the few scattered pools. With the sweet music of running water, these survivors may be relocated, to a new neighborhood, to start life anew.

July 3, 2010

The Lure of the Brook

By: Jeff Hoagland, Education Director

It would seem appropriate on any given summer day to retreat to the cool shade of the Stony Brook to listen to her music and enjoy her many charms. On this day we choose the Province Line Road Bridge, long closed, for a launching point for some fishing and some general exploring. By fishing, I mean fish-watching, using a pole armed with a barbless hook We meet others at this location, with the same idea, so we climb down below the bridge as they are already stationed twenty feet above the Brook, reeling there fish up toward the sky.

The water is low. Real low. I don’t hear people talking about drought but guess what folks — it is here. We can see a variety of fish and are rather successful at catching some of them. The red-breasted sunfish are the most numerous; the males with their day-glow orange belly and the long dark earflap. We meet some rock bass, who dart from under cover to grab the bait and then try to swim far away with it. We also see largemouth bass, who inspects the bait and then turns disinterested, knowing better. The suckers are plentiful and seem rather oblivious but I am sure they are just following their sucker routines.

Upstream, just off the Laurie Chauncey Trail at ETS (this is Green Acres Open Space — nice setting for a workplace, isn’t it?) we explore some more. Someone has been eating crayfish. There are cracked claws and carapaces, and little legs on just about every large rock. There is evidence of fox hunting here and great blue heron too. Somebody is enjoying the low water level. The food resources are pooled together.

We spy a northern water snake on the bank. In its jaws is a struggling catfish, a mouthful for sure. It offers the best resistance in knows — its pectoral and dorsal fins are armed with one very sharp spine each and they are extended outward from the body. The snake doesn’t like the audience so it retreats into the brook and crosses to the other side. We watch from the distance as it slowly works the fish headfirst in its mouth and starts the slow process of swallowing. The fish is no longer struggling but those nasty spines are still in place. Even in death, the fish seems determined to avoid this fate. We watch for quite some time and retreat to let this episode pass in private as they most often do. We are grateful for the encounter.