the big picture and the small

This looks pretty gross, doesn't it?
Well, there's a little more to the story than meets the eye. I included the tire in the above picture to increase the sense of abandonment and the trashy aspect of the green over the pond. This just looks like an expanse of nasty algae filled water that nothing could survive in.

The close-up picture below shows that the pond's not choked with algae, but with Duckweed. While duckweed can also be bothersome, it's a great source of protein and doesn't choke out aquatic organisms the way that algal blooms can.

This particular bit of water is a somewhat stagnant area off of Beaver Creek near Apex, NC. The creek supports a wide assortment of life including, as you might guess from the name, beavers. I went there trying to get pictures of the beavers since I'd heard that you can make money on the Internet from beavers shots. I did find two, but the two I saw were never close enough for me to focus on quickly enough. With my 12X zoom all the way out it was too difficult to find the fast moving beaver and they were moving in and out of the trees; underwater more than they were above. It was nice watching them awhile tho. I'll tell you, there's nothing like wet beaver to make you appreciate nature. And given how many trees were gnawed at the bottom, there must be plenty of those toothy rodents in this area.

This creek is about a mile in from the entrance to the Apex portion of the American Tobacco Trail in the middle left part of the map below. The creek is part of the runoff from the Jordan Lake basin so it's never dry.

Comments

SassyAssy said…
Cool pics! Going swamp stomping again today?
Noi Rocker said…
Wow I have always wanted to spend some time exploring nature. Even the swamp looks beautiful to me.You are so lucky to be around nature!
Anonymous said…
Duckweed is so cheerful. Teensy weensie polka dot...meniscus.

Lots more pretty pics coming in your time off?

In Safari all your text has gone huge and with red underlines. Is that a known thing?
Anonymous said…
The top photo does look sort of toxic, the bottom one intriguing. When I was nine I wanted to be a marine biologist. My friends and I spent hours playing in a creekside park, once meeting a pair of muskrats. The bottom photo brought that back for me.
srp said…
Any ducks or geese around the duckweed? This does look yuk at first sight... about on the same order as the water looks in spring when the pines pollinate
and you get that yellow scum floating on top.
Anonymous said…
My brother, Delane (life in Mayberry) sees beavers out kayaking all the time and I never see them on any of my walks....I guess they hear me coming. I would love to find one....I do see their handy work!
utenzi said…
Deana, I used to visit your brother's blog quite a bit the first few months I was blogging. I don't think I've been there in well over a year now.

SRP, there were a lot of birds there including some woodpeckers but I didn't see any waterfowl in the river or the ponds.

Melissa, I've never seen any muskrats out in the "wild"

Pearl, I was doing some coding on the CSS in my site to cure a problem in Opera. No doubt that was what caused the nasty appearance in Safari. Since I don't have a Mac, I never check against Safari so I didn't realize that I'd run into new problems there.

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