Field Guide
—The plants, animals, fish, and fungi of the lower end of Five Mile Creek, with what to look for, what it gets mistaken for, and what the old people said about it. Every photograph is a real one with a name on it, and most of them were taken in Alabama.
Knowing what lives along the creek is how you notice when something changes. The mayflies under a rock, the heron that works the same stretch every evening, the wildflowers that come back to the same bank each spring: when they thin out or go missing, the people who knew them are the first to see it. Nature Watch has what is out this month.
The sightings on that page are there because somebody filed them on iNaturalist, which is the most useful thing anybody here can do with a photograph. Post one taken in Graysville, Cardiff, or Brookside, and once other naturalists have agreed on the name it joins the record this site reads. For a bird, the Cornell Lab's free Merlin app will put a name to one from a photograph or from its song, and it works with no signal.
The guide
—Where you are standing
Five habitats, one creekThe same walk gives you a different list depending on the ground under your feet. Each of these holds its own species and asks for its own boots.
What you turn over in the creek itself is worth reading twice. Mayflies in a riffle mean the water is carrying oxygen and not much else. Worms and midges on their own mean the opposite. The paperwork behind that is on what goes into the creek, which lists who is permitted to discharge into it and what the water has measured lately.
Before you go out
Snakes
Most of the snakes you meet here are not the one you are worried about
Along moving water the northern water snake is far commoner than the cottonmouth, and it gets killed for the resemblance every summer. Neither one wants the encounter. Give it room, walk around it, and do not put a hand anywhere you have not looked. Long pants, boots, and gaiters from March to October cover the part of you a snake can actually reach.
Ticks and chiggers
Light clothes, tucked cuffs, and a check when you get home
Light colored clothing lets you see a tick before it reaches skin. Tuck your pants into your socks in tall grass, which is where the chiggers are. Check yourself thoroughly afterward, and check children and dogs too.
Fire
Wildfire season runs February through May, then again in the fall
We live in the woods. Clear underbrush around your property when and where you can, do not burn on a windy day, and keep a defensible space. Fire connects your land to your neighbor's, so what you clear protects both. The state issues burn permits and drought notices.
Alabama Forestry Commission, burn permits and current restrictions.
Know it or guess it
Where this comes from The field notes are written by this site and kept in its own file. The photographs come from iNaturalist, chosen from research grade observations released under CC0, CC BY, or CC BY-SA, and every one is credited to the person who took it on the species entry. Where a photograph was taken in Alabama the entry says so. Hunting and fishing season dates are set by the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and the annual regulations are the authority on all of it. Nothing on this page is a mushroom identification. If you are eating it, you need more than a photograph on a phone.