This is from the June issue of the Parkwood Inside/Out. It might be past time for some of the behaviors described, but all summer the daily lives of fish are easy to observe, or easier than in winter.
Our next meeting is scheduled for July 13th at 3pm at the Parkwood Volunteer Fire Department. [The meeting has been moved up Seaton Road to the Parkwood Village Pool.]
NECSW was represented at a community consultation in June about a proposed apartment development at the intersection of 54 and Revere Road, but no neighbors attended.
Fish to Watch
June is a good time for fishwatching in the many waterways in Parkwood, as many species enter shallow water to spawn, often in bright breeding colors and exhibiting complex behaviors.
In Parkwood Lake there are swirling black masses of cute baby catfish, guarded by their parents, camouflaged in the murky water. The babies, or fry, are tadpolelike, with big heads and fins, but short tails. They are a species of bullhead catfish, probably black bullheads. In summer a pair swims in circles to excavate a round nest among plants or under a log. The parents guard their many eggs for the few days until they hatch and then stay with them until they grow to about two inches. Later in the summer light-colored fry can be seen darting alone over the bottom to deeper water when a person approaches the shoreline. When caught, bullheads hold their front pectoral and dorsal fins rigid, exposing sharp spines. Small madtom catfish inject painful venom through these spines. Bullheads grow to around a foot and a half long, but the Lake’s channel catfish can grow to around four feet. Channel catfish are grey, slender, and have sharply forked tails. Both channel catfish and black bullheads were probably introduced to this part of North Carolina from the Mississippi River basin.
The nests of sunfish species honeycomb the shoreline of the north Euclid Pond. There are many species, often lumped together as panfish or bream, but these fish are probably bluegills and/or pumpkinseeds. Their colors are hard to see in the water, but bluegills are blueish with stripes and males have red throats now while pumpkinseeds are reticulated with orange and blue. Most sunfish have a black opercular lobe behind the eye, and this is plain black in bluegills, but bordered with orange and white in pumpkinseeds. Males use the motion from their fins to create nests, where they court females. Smaller males try to get in to fertilize the eggs by mimicking females or sneaking in when the owner is distracted. Males guard the eggs and fry until they leave the nest. Sometimes sunfish will even nip at feet placed close by, if they don’t know a human is attached! Surprisingly large sunfish can live in Piedmont brooks and in summer sunfish travel far upstream from the Lake. Largemouth bass are a species of sunfish, and they create correspondingly large, isolated nests.
The minnow family, the biggest family of fish, seems more abundant in clear rocky streams than in suburban lakes, but there are some species in Parkwood. Common carp are gold-colored minnows with short barbels on the corners of their vacuum-like, down pointing mouths. There are carp three feet long in the Lake. To breed, groups of one or a few females and several males enter weedy areas and carry on with splashing and jumping. Carp were introduced from the Old World as a food fish. Japanese koi are colorful, long-lived, and sometimes expensive domesticated carp. Carp tolerate poor water quality and are eaten by predators like otters in Northeast Creek, but they degrade habitat for native fish by uprooting aquatic vegetation and muddying the water. In late summer large carp can be seen gulping at the surface of deep pools in the Creek, such as below the American Tobacco Trail bridge. There are or were large goldfish in Parkwood Lake. Wild goldfish are drab and can grow over a foot long. They are non-native and can hybridize with carp. Small shiners, of which there are many native species, can be found in Northeast Creek and possibly in Parkwood Lake.
The Lake’s ever-present, nondescript grayish “minnows” are actually mosquitofish, Gambusia affinis, basically a wild guppy, and have black spots and a neon violet sheen up close. The large females have a large black spot and give birth to live young. If you look closely, their mouths are turned up, to pick off insects such as mosquito larvae, breathing at the surface. The Lotus Pond doesn’t have much flow in the summer, so some guppies are afflicted with a white fungus on their fins.
In nearby weedy beaver ponds, if not in Parkwood Lake, there are toothy bowfin, also called dogfish, living fossils that can breathe air and make bass scatter. Males guard schools of young until they grow to about four inches. It would be cool to see a prehistoric-looking longnose gar, but I have only heard of them being seen at Westpoint on the Eno and maybe in north Raleigh. Chain pickerel with ducklike snouts also lurk in weedy beaver ponds and wetlands. Pickerel are lunging predators, cylindrical, with fins set far back, so they can dart out at prey. On the other hand, sunfish have a pan-shape that lets them catch small prey up and down the water column. Shoals of filter-feeding shad sometimes ruffle the surface of Parkwood Lake. In Northeast Creek there are many small species, such as darters and mudminnows.