Creek creatures
Mayfly nymph (Family Leptophlebiidae)
Waterwatch is again up and running in the Flowerdale/Strath Creek area with several local volunteers conducting monthly sampling and testing at various sites on the King Parrot and Strath Creeks. Waterwatch is a water quality monitoring network connecting local communities with river health and sustainable water issues and management.
Last Saturday David spent an afternoon with Waterwatch coordinators Danielle and Kirsten as they undertook a training and accreditation course on the King Parrot Creek run by Ed Tsyrlin, co-author of the wonderful guide to freshwater macro-invertebrates called ‘The Waterbug Book’. The afternoon course covered sampling techniques and identification of waterbugs.
So on Monday, armed with fresh enthusiasm, limited knowledge and a net, we collected a sample from the King Parrot Creek at Burslem’s Bridge and sorted through it to see what bugs we had. The more we looked, the more we found, with critters ranging from small shrimps to tiny specks. The photos below show just a few of them, which we have managed to identify with some help from Kirsten. Also included are a couple of photos from our wetland featured in a previous post, Dam right !, which we are now able to have a stab at identifying.
Focus On Fauna 