The Rivanna Rambler

February 28, 2008

In the midst of winter, there are bugs in the stream that are alive and well – and some, eve, are hatching out to become insects, having found their aquatic niche at a time when no others compete.  During StreamWatch sampling on the upper Doyle’s, we find several families of winter stoneflies.

 

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This show originally aired on February 28, 2008 and again on December 4, 2008 on “The Rivanna Rambler,” a weekly public affairs show airing every Thursday at 11:55 a.m. on WTJU 91.1 FM or wtju.net.

The upper Doyles River, like most headwater streams in the Rivanna watershed, is about as pristine as they come.  The waters that collect from springs and drainages of the land that is protected by Shenandoah National Park do not suffer the assaults of sediment and runoff that challenge the health of streams at lower elevations.  For this reason, the community based water monitoring program, StreamWatch, has chosen a spot high on the Doyles as one of several headwater streams that will be used during the next few years as “reference streams” – a standard of “as good as it gets in our watershed” — against which other tributaries of the Rivanna will be evaluated.

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October 23, 2008

 

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  This show originally aired on October 30, 2008 on “The Rivanna Rambler,” a weekly public affairs show airing every Thursday at 11:55 a.m. on WTJU 91.1 FM or wtju.net.

I do not have a lot of experience counting fish that are schooling, but as our canoe floated by the long olive green shapes in the clear water of the lower Rivanna, I couldn’t help but cry out, “There must be fifty of them!”

Well, as soon as I said it, I began to wonder if I was even close.  True, it was only Becky and me in our canoe paddling down the shallow sunlit water towards the Rivenna Mills sampling site in Fluvanna.  But the claim could not go unverified, so budding naturalists that we are, we turned around and cautiously paddled back upstream, hugging the bank as far away as possible from where we’d seen the fish  that were also swimming upstream.  Turning once again, we floated back down in the foot deep water, slow enough to count them as we drifted by.  Close enough to admire the broad flat tail fin, ridged and undulating, gently propelling the fish upstream.  Close enough to see the

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September 18, 2008

 

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This show originally aired in September 11, 2008 on “The Rivanna Rambler,” a weekly public affairs show airing every Thursday at 11:55 a.m. on WTJU 91.1 FM or wtju.net

When we arrive at the informal parking lot at Sugar Hollow Reservoir, it isn’t surprising to find almost every available parking slot between the tall trees already taken. It’s a hot Sunday afternoon with moist air pushed northward by the hurricane – most are here to get cool, to swim or sit by the water. But Cole Peale-Grody, his father, Charles, and me have another goal. Along with another father-son team we meet here, we’re going snake hunting on the north fork of the Moormans in Shenandoah National Park,

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August 21, 2008

 

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This show originally aired in August 21, 2008 on “The Rivanna Rambler,” a weekly public affairs show airing every Thursday at 11:55 a.m. on WTJU 91.1 FM or wtju.net

On a still, hot morning, I head out of town to visit some friends who are transforming their own corner of heaven in northern Albemarle County. Vickie and Mark Gottlob live in a house they finished building four years along the North Fork of the Rivanna.  It sits on a wooded slope of Buffalo Ridge, named for the mammals that once roamed these parts.  The Gottlobs are working with Louise Finger of the Virginia Department of Inland Game and Fisheries to help restore habitat in the river for another species rarely seen here: the Jamesriver Spineymussel.

This is my third visit to the site. Before Louise and her team of heavy equipment operators arrived earlier this week, I had come up to visit the river “before” so I could better appreciate the changes “after”.  I had donned appropriate river wading gear and dropped down into one of the deeper holes.  With cooling water up to my waist, I could see the bank slumping steeply into the stream and showing the signs of instability even an untrained eye could see.  The Gottlob’s small floodplain pasture was being eaten away by storm flows and gravity, and all this dirt was settling in the river and clogging the very life out of it.  But there were solid gravel bars, mounded here and there with piles of small cobble left by chub and other nest-building species.  It had the potential to be good habitat for the spineymussel if it could be stabilized.

The Jamesriver Spineymussel is a rarely seen mollusk in our parts – but its influence has been felt for years

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July 17, 2008

 

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This show originally aired in July 17, 2008 on “The Rivanna Rambler,” a weekly public affairs show airing every Thursday at 11:55 a.m. on WTJU 91.1 FM or wtju.net

As I sat at our kitchen table yesterday evening, casually peering into the loose thicket of privet that divides our lot from our neighbors, I was startled to see the tawny brown of what could only be a deer moving slowly across the lawn towards his house.

Head down, browsing on the choice green grass, the deer was unconcerned, casually munching as if it had been there before. Now, for many in our watershed, this would not be an unusual sight, but not only do we live in the city, we live uphill, across the street, and several houses away from the green corridor that flanks the unnamed stream that flows downhill from the ridge of Rugby Road.

So why did the deer choose to cross the road, after all?

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