As I walked to my reflection spot from Gottwald four large turkey vultures took to the air from their perch. It seemed really ominous for a calm sunny 65-degree day. It even appeared as they were circling overhead as their shadows would dart across my face when I gazed up to look at them. The woods seemed oddly quite too as I entered possibly related to the vultures, but soon enough they disappeared from sight. Just as soon as they disappeared noise once again filled the air. Birds chirping, woodpeckers knocking, owls hooting, leaves rustling, squirrels scampering up trees, and the babbling brook could be heard. Something had changed since my last visit.
Looking around I thought to myself, be this really spring? It’s February and hasn’t even reached March. Yet it is warm and new flowers are already beginning to bloom, in particular daffodils. Apparently the saying March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb doesn’t apply to Virginia. The small purple and blue flowers really made me feel that the area was coming back to life. They clung to the once barren banks of the stream. Then there in one of the sandy pools there was movement. It was not a leaf that I would see on my last visit, but a wriggling tadpole! Then another appeared and yet another and another. Their heads were about the size of a nickel and there tails were an inch long. These young tadpoles shared their home with small fish. They were roughly two inches long and had two dark lateral stripes on their bodies. A stream that once seemed dead seemed to becoming alive. The tadpoles and fish reacted to the movement of my shadow. The fish darted throughout the pool together as the tadpoles moved away from one another. Are these possibly linked to survival strategies?
As I moved along the bank there were no more tadpoles or fish, but I think I heard a frog croak once or twice. However, down the stream there were flies hovering just above the water. The flies were a sure sign for me that spring was here and my favorite mosquitoes will be out biting in no time. In stark contrast to the livelier brook was Westham Creek. It seemed just as stagnant as before the layer of brownish green slime covered the riverbed. The swirling gyre of foam had turned from an off white to a sickly orange-brown color. No flies buzzed around even. Nothing had changed in the creek, well except maybe for the more trash I found. Three new golf balls were lodged into the muck on the river bottom and an Outback Steakhouse take out box lay trapped by a rock in the middle of the river.
I gathered what I could reach, which included a Styrofoam cup, a dated Sprite can, and my favorite a Gatorade water bottle. It looked really old and even had the name of its owner, Sarah Mergenthaler. How long ago was this lost? Did this person go to Richmond? It is always interesting to see what man-made things were washed into the creek. The corridor must constantly see trash move through its waters as it makes its way toward the James. But the question really is how long does the stuff stay here? I think it was an interesting dichotomy between the brook and Westham Creek. One seemed to be just jumping into spring, as the other still lay dormant. One seemed clean, the other laden with waste. Surely Westham creek will spring to life soon, spring hasn’t quite reached it yet.
These looked like the tadpoles I saw! I could take a good picture of them in the water. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kaulquappen_Tadpole_3.JPG