multiple Mudpuppy Night

[Frederick W. Schueler]

Everyone,

Last night we suffered from GFSD ("guests for supper delay") and when I
arrived at Mudpuppy Night (2009, -1°C, clear, calm, water 1.5°C, 1.4
cubic metres/second, 36% of the average 5.13 cubic metres/second from
RVCA graph) the site was agleam with the headlights of investigators and
guests.

The parkinglot was fenced up around a trailer, panels of fence blocked
off the path down to the west shore, there were tarps across west
spillway and the east side of the dam, huge piles of Buckthorn and other
brush had been cut, and there was plywood against some walls of the dam
on the east side, so the MNR is obviously undertaking some repairs to
the dam. There was open water above the dam, with only a single metre
patch of ice on some plants at the surface on the east side.

Visitors were clustered around Douglas Strick and his crew as they
PIT-tagged Mudpuppies which Paton McIntyre and her crew were catching,
one by one, on the flats. The water below the dropoff was still murky,
and when I did the bridge I could see the bottom in the spotlight for
almost all the way across on the downstream side, but not on the deeper
upstream side.

The water coming over the spillways was clear, and the strong current
had washed away most of the algae and was tussling the rooted plants
across the flats. No Crayfish or fish were seen, only one tadpole, and a
single tiny dead Green Frog (perhaps swept over the dam), and a
scattering of white Lymnaea stagnalis snail shells, but the main feature
was Payton catching Mudpuppies one-by-one and bringing them to Doug &
his crew to scan and PIT-tag in a bright cluster of kids and parents,
and Stephany Hildebrand snapping photos of the process.

fred.
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---------Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad ------------
Fragile Inheritance Natural History - https://fragileinheritance.ca/
6 St-Lawrence Street Bishops Mills, RR#2 Oxford Station, Ontario K0G 1T0
on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain 44.87156° N 75.70095° W
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