by Winding Pathways | Oct 10, 2024 | Nature, Water Resources
The male protects the eggs from predators.
All Fish are awesome! Rich learned that firsthand. As a young boy, he spent hours watching male sunfish guard their saucer-shaped nests in the shallow water of Cedar Lake.
Sunfish
Sunfish are awesome! This huge family of fish flip-flops the way nature normally defines child-rearing. In most animals, the female gets the work. That’s not how sunfish families operate.
Male sunfish provide primary child care. He makes a nest in shallow water every spring over a sandy or pebbly bottom. When it’s finished a female hovers over it and releases hundreds of eggs as he releases millions of tiny sperm. Hopefully egg meets sperm and the now fertilized egg nestles into the sandy nest.
Tough Life
Life’s not easy. Small fish, and especially small sunfish, love feasting on the eggs. Mom departs with no child-rearing duties, while Dad stands by chasing off any intruder intent on a meal of eggs.
Where Sunfish Live
There are sunfish in nearly every body of relatively warm fresh water from Canada down to the Gulf of Mexico. Even renowned gamefish, like large and smallmouth bass, are in the sunfish family. The most commonly known is the bluegill. Most sunfish species are on the small side. They’re lumped together as panfish because they’re easy to catch, prolific, and tasty.
Fisherman’s Life
Awesome bluegill!
Rich had the good fortune to grow up next to a New Jersey Lake, where he watched fish and learned how to catch them. A love of fish led to his earning a degree in fishery biology and an early career working with fish in Alaska.
All Fish Are Awesome!
Book by Noel Vick
Not all kids are lucky enough to live near a lake, but a new book will help them learn that All Fish Are Awesome. That’s the title of Noel Vick’s new book. Its colorful art shows many amazing fish species of both fresh and saltwater, with a bit of text about each one. It’s a great book for parents or grandparents to share with a child perched in their lap. Then, on a pleasant spring day bring that kid to a nearby lake to spot sunfish nests and maybe even wet a line. It might ignite a lifeline passion for fish and fishing or even lead to a career.
Where to Buy the Book
The book’s available at Amazon or blueballoonbooks.com.
by Winding Pathways | Jul 25, 2024 | Nature, Travel/Columns, Water Resources
Tumbling waters
There it is! A Waterfall. There’s a second. Wow, just upstream is a third. Three waterfalls in one Iowa stretch of stream! How can that be in such a flat state?
Waterfalls bring mental images of water tumbling down steep hillsides where it plunges hundreds of feet downward. We’ve marveled at tall falls in many states including Hawaii, Nebraska, Washington, Indiana, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and New Jersey. But Rich had discovered the waterfall trio in an unexpected state – Iowa – and in an equally unexpected part of the state.
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Water tumbles through a narrow cataract.
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Indiana surprise
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North Shore Falls
Briggs Woods County Park Delight
Amid north central Iowa’s vast level corn and bean fields he discovered the three cascades after a short hike near Webster City. More than rushing water caught his eyes. Fish were trying to leap up the rushing torrent. “It brought back memories of salmon leaping Brooks Falls in Alaska. These were small fish of an unknown species. Watching them was great fun,” he said. The three falls are close together in Hamilton County’s Briggs Woods Park and all it takes to enjoy them is a short hike on an easy trail.
Driftless Area
Iowa isn’t flat. Mostly it’s rolling terrain, but the state’s northeast corner features downright steep slopes. It’s the Driftless area, where most of Iowa’s falls gurgle and tumble down into clear running trout streams.
Touring Iowa’s Waterfalls
Seeing the Briggs Woods falls gave us a waterfall bug, so a few weeks later we drove north from our Cedar Rapids home. A region of Karst topography, the Driftless boasts dozens of clear water trout streams and several impressive falls.
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Karst topography helps create waterfalls.
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Bridal veil falls, at Pikes Peak
Decorah Area
Decorah is Iowa’s waterfall epicenter. Twin Springs bubbles quietly from the ground and flows down past a campground. Siewer’s and Dunnings Springs hurl an impressive amount of cool clear water over rocks close to downtown. (Note, the travel Iowa site uses an apostrophe (‘) for Siewer’s Spring but not for Dunnings). It’s easy to park close to all of these. Viewing nearby Malanaphy Springs is worth the mile walk. It’s the best known of several falls that send water to the Upper Iowa River.
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Cooling waters.
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Water tumbles from the ledges
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A popular stop for canoeists on the Upper Iowa River.
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Hike through quiet woods.
Other Waterfalls
Other Waterfalls? Yup. Depending on who you ask and what you consider a waterfall, the Hawkeye state has dozens of them. Many aren’t natural waterfalls. Many are human-made cascades tumbling down a dam spillway, but the ones mentioned above are genuine nature-made falls.
Benefits of Seeking Out Waterfalls
We love falls for their beauty. Visiting them has a side benefit. They are in Iowa’s most beautiful terrain. A waterfall viewing trip gives the opportunity to see these unexpected Iowa sights, hike challenging trails, enjoy local eateries, and overnight in nearby campgrounds or one of the dozens of bed and breakfasts scattered about rural and small-town Iowa.
Where to Find Waterfalls
A helpful resource for finding falls is Travel Iowa – 14 Wonderful Waterfalls in Iowa.
by Winding Pathways | Mar 28, 2024 | Water Resources, Water Resources
(reworked from Iowa’s Wildside Column 8-27-1989)
“When will they ever learn…?” the refrain from Pete Seeger’s song circled in my mind as I reviewed columns, I wrote for the Cedar Rapids Gazette. One stood out. Iowa’s rivers and their then deteriorating condition.
Old Issue Newly Revisited
Over the past 18 months, The Gazette’s environmental writer, Brittney Miller, has addressed Iowa’s poor water quality and its impact on aquatic life.
Ah, yes, when WILL we ever learn? This is a revisit of my column from 30+ years ago.
Iowa is embraced by two of North America’s mightiest rivers – the Missouri and the Mississippi. An interesting network of streams feeds them. The height of land that divides the two drainages follows a barely perceptible rise along a northwest-southeast ridge in the western quarter of the state.
“Let The Rivers Run”
As though Paul Bunyon drew his fingers through Iowa’s geological sandbox, the major tributaries line up in roughly parallel lines flowing southeast to the Mississippi and southwest to the Missouri.
Native Americans and settlers followed these rivers. Later, steamboats, loaded with farm equipment, household goods, and finery pushed their way upstream to then bustling communities. As Iowa’s agricultural economy boomed, grist mills appeared. Farmers exported their grains to Eastern cities along Iowa’s waterways. Emerging railroads and silting waterways hastened the demise of mills. Then, hydropower proved profitable until coal and nuclear power took over.
“Managing” Water
A typical spring scene in the South. Homes under water.
Earliest settlers cussed the Missouri for being too thin to plow and too thick to drink. They couldn’t tolerate its unruly, flood-prone behavior so Congress authorized channeling it with the “Missouri River Stabilization and Navigation Project.” Today, the Missouri is mostly an emasculated drainage ditch – until it rebels and reveals its power, as it has done in recent years.
Consequences
Gone are the oxbows, meanders, belt of trees, and diverse wildlife. Iowans value farmland over natural riparian habitats beneficial to mammals, birds, reptiles, insects, and aquatic life. Oh, and us!
Mighty Mississip
The Mississippi River stretches from Minnesota to the Gulf Coast.
The Mississippi River was dammed and dredged to provide sufficient depth for barge traffic. The dams did create numerous backwaters that support wildlife, but the Great River cannot flush itself out, so it chokes in its own silt. That toxic-laden silt slides downstream poisoning the Gulf and disrupting commercial fisheries there.
What Floodplains Do
Flood plains are areas for all wild and roiling rivers to spend their energy. The dissipated water helps recharge wetlands, and cleanses and naturally replenishes groundwater supplies. Sediment filters out on flood plains, enriching the soil.
Again and Again and Again
As we build and rebuild on flood plains, we keep spending untold dollars trying to conquer the natural elements. As residential, industrial, and agricultural demand for water increases, we rely more heavily on groundwater. That source is stressed, too. The multi-year droughts Iowa has experienced have impacted the aquifers. Lower water tables and tainted water supplies result.
When WILL we learn that our water supplies are important and to treat them respectfully and carefully?
