McGee Creek Revisited

June 24th, 2016:

June 18th, 2019:

Difficult to believe!  That was looking west, down stream from the bridge. Now let us look  upstream on July 2nd 2016:

And on Tuesday June 18, 2019:

Evidently the cattle have not been using this pasture recently this year - maybe one ought to contemplate growing wild rice or "manoomin "   and let the beaver help. Would the Conservancy enter into a partnership with the grower to help sell the rice? Maybe one could encourage the beaver to build the dam upstream from the bridge to increase the flooding- However, from time to time, the dam would have to be lowered to maintain a flow of water needed by the "manoomin". Let global heating come!

Wise Old Beard

McGee has fallen

Saw a dozen or more "exotic" bird species yesterday on Wylie and Shrike. Took time to look at McGee, too. Fitzgerald Line might be interesting to visit for water monitoring - ?

Up and further up.
Side banks:

Down stream is very narrow compared to a few weeks ago:

But the real shock was at the bridge itself. I walked out on the "beaver" lodge to get a better view looking north with the stream flowing form right to left:

Maybe 10cm deep ? Have not seen it this low since August 2016.
Did not see any minnows but there were a couple of dragonflies, no damsels.25C, some showers and sunshine, breezy.

wob

The Real McGee

This is what the north side/down stream edge of McGee looked like Tuesday May 1,2018:

And the following were taken in 2017. First on Thursday May 4 when the Creek had a depth of 57cm at the "standard measuring place at the far side/upstream of the bridge.

Clearly deeper than yesterday - maybe by 20cm? making yesterday's depth 37cm approx.

Here is a ruler

I observed some snow in the bush but generally Spring has returned for another year.

Generally, down streamed looked like so on May 1, 2018

:

Upstream McGee looked unchanged:

For practical purposes, the sun is infinitely far away and so the rays casting my shadow are parallel
and so my shadow hand is also 9cm across, and my head shadow 16cm - in the picture. (As measured here at home with a ruler.)

W O B

Me and McGee on Thursday

A week earlier our friend Arni gave a great talk, loaded with insider tips - very generously shared with the audience. He mentioned something which resonated with me this afternoon - and lo and behold, I captured it yesterday by accident. So this blog is dedicated to friends who are as hard as rocks and endurable as diamonds - I hope you recognize yourselves:

It may not be well known that there are diamonds in Canada, let alone, here, in Ontario. But there are. In fact, there is a pipe near by:

Here many kinds of diamonds are to be found floating in the Carden pipe:

Colour appears:

Emeralds and Rubies, too:

Diamonds can be woven, also into floats:

And of course, diamonds may be worn:

  

All that glitters ...

W O B

McGee Creek

On Christmas Eve I went over to see how the beaver was doing on McGee Creek.

Not much to see, but to the right of the yellow post is the pile where the water snake posed in the October sunshine. To the right, beside the opon water there were some tracks, but I don't think made by an animal with a significant tail

Further down stream, the Creek was quite surprisingly large:

Above the bridge the Creek was snow covered:

Not a sign of cattle on the bank to the South-East:

There were some cattle at the top of the hill to the South, 600m away from the Creek.

W O B

Benthic McGee Creek Tue-Wed Sept 19-20, 2017

Hydra is a constellation! So finding an astronomer or two, knee-deep in water, ought not to be so outrageous? Well, maybe ...

This is our site looking upstream/east on the Tuesday when we measured the water quality. Here are some details to the right and left of the central rill/current:

Note the material hanging from the fence across the creek - there was some during the Spring runoff but most was caught in June when a beaver built a dam some 5m downstream from where I was standing. The water level reached 70cm or so then. The dam was subsequently removed and the water depth on Tues was 23cm under the bridge after 12 hours of rain. Nevertheless, there has been a marked reduction in current and an increase in sediments.

After we collected our sample, I noted that the water stayed turbid for at least 10minutes afterwards. Last year the clouds would have cleared - been swept away - in 1-2 minutes. Last year the current was about 1m in 6 seconds, this year more than a minute, 10 times slower, even though there is not much left of the dam, just friction.

W O B