Photo Essay
Stink Creek
Amateur naturalists on the Southern Llano Estacado visit two “streams” to find the floral and faunal residents of the alkali habitat. One stream is “Stink Creek,” where the tertiary treated sewage of Odessa flows down Monahans Draw. In most years it will flow as far as SH 1788 and a little further east. In the winter, or during periods of rain, it will flow many miles and has filled up Soda Lake (see photoessay on Soda Lake). If Monahans Draw is traced on a map, it will join Midland Draw, which joins Mustang Draw and just east of Lomax (southwest of Big Springs) Mustang Draw is bisected by a road. Some of the pictures in this photoessay also come from this crossing of Mustang Draw, where water is always present.
These photos were taken by members of the 2008 Master Naturalist Program (Leslie Harman, Taffy Armstrong, Sharon Jones, Mark Pelham).
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Much of Stink Creek is filled with cattails, but there are places with open water. Marsh birds are found here, including American Bittern, Short-eared Owl (in winter), Virginia Rail, Sora Rail, Whitefaced Ibis, Marsh Wren (in winter), Redwinged Blackbird, Great-tailed Grackle and many more. Sunflowers usually grow along the edge of the cattails.
Also along the edge of the cattail marsh is a dense salt cedar thicket.
The water is rich in nutrients, and green filamentous algae grows in the water.
Blackbirds line up on electric lines as they return to the marsh to spend the night.
In the winter Harrier Hawks cruise up and down the draw, hunting small rodents, birds, and the occassional coot.
Coots live year around in the marsh.
Coots are dabblers, eating small aquatic invertebrates and succulent vegetation by bending their head into the water. They rarely submerge (usually when attacked by a harrier!)
When coots leave the water, they run along the surface, splashing as they go.
Salt cedar came to the United States as an ornamental tree in the 1850s, and began spreading along the waterways of the American Southwest by 1900. They utilize incredible amounts of water, so along the freshwater streams of the region, millions of dollars are now spent in their eradication.
The youngest stems of salt cedar are bright red. In southwestern and Mexican house ornamentation, blinds are now made of these stems (and often painted many bright colors.)
Salt cedar can become a large multi-trunked tree over 20 feet tall. As a salt cedar thicket ages, many of the smaller salt cedars die out, until a stream has separate "trees." Salt cedars drop their foliage, and transfer salts to the soil, so very few plants will grow under them.
Salt cedar seems to play a role in some golden algae outbreaks. Golden algae will kill fish. Stink Creek usually has black bullhead catfish, several species of minnows, and carp in its waters.
Beyond the edge of the salt cedar a mixed grassland of alkali sacaton and jimmyweed can be found at Stink Creek. Sunflowers grow in open areas.
Many species of annuals form winter rosettes after the seed germinates in the fall. The leaves often turn reddish as a result of freezing temperatures, but the rosettes do not die.
A small trench in the soil caught the photographer's eye. It was caused by a branch of saltbush blowing in the wind.
Saltbush forms golden seeds in the fall, and they remain on the plant into March.
Next to the saltbush is the dried up stems of Jimmyweed. Jimmyweed, when green, is poisonous to cattle. It has beautiful yellow blooms much like a goldenrod in midsummer, which attract many butterflies and other insects to its nectar. (type in jimmyweed in the website search engine to find photographs of the plant in bloom.)
Open areas are found between the Jimmyweed and Alkali sacaton grass. The salt in the water seeps through the soil, causing an efflorescence of the salts on the soil surface up to 50 feet or more from the waterline.
The round brown stick is the remains of a plant named broomrape, which is a parasite on grasses and other plants. It is usually found in alkaline soil, although it has been found in shallow gravel soils with creosote bush, too. Other species of broomrape are pests in farm fields in other regions of the world, damaging grain crops.
Along stink creek the gray gyppy soil sometimes extends far beyond the waterline, which indicates that sometime in the past this part of the draw held water for long periods of time (probably the Pleistocene, but maybe even much earlier.) The calcium carbonates in the water mix with organic material to create this form of soil over long periods.
Mustang Draw has soil with the salt efflorescence, too. The soil is not always gray underneath. When another color of soil is found under the salt efflorescence, this indicates the "gyppy" conditions have not been present very long (in geologic terms.)
When the salt efflorescence if found under sand dropseed, as in this picture, it indicates the salty soil is a recent condition, for eventually the dropseed will die out as the soil pH becomes higher.
Saltgrass is found worldwide in alkaline conditions. It is common along many seacoasts, but is also found far inland in the right conditions.
What in the world is the curved object in this photo that has been covered with the salt efflorescence?
Turkeys roost in groves of soapberry and hackberry trees (and sometimes on electric highlines) not far from the draw. The birds come to drink the water and hunt for insects.
Badgers live along the draw, too. They eat ground squirrels, snakes, and bird eggs, as well as some vegetation's roots and fruits.
Animal trails snake through the salt cedar thicket and sacaton grass meadow.
In recent years feral hogs have taken up residence along Stink Creek. Javelinas appeared first (in the late 1980s) but they may disappear because of competition from the feral hogs.
Raccoons now live along draw, as well, drawn by the aquatic invertebrates and bird eggs (like those of coots) and water turtle eggs. People have released red-eared slider turtles into the "creek."
The raccoons also eat another animal found in the "creek." What is it?
Now do you know what the shell came from?
Crawdads have adapted to the salty soil. Fisherman released them into the draw, just like the turtles and fish found there, too.
Deer moved back into the draw in the 1980s, so it is not a surprise to find one's skeleton.
Old fenceposts in the water slowly turn white with salt.
Roadrunners hunt the many species of small birds (or their eggs) that come to drink, along with lizards and snakes.
Meadowlarks not only come to water, but to find grass seeds. Both Eastern and Western Meadowlarks are found (Eastern in winter, Western in summer, for the most part.)
A winter sunset over sewage water can be pretty!
Coots will continue paddling around until complete darkness falls.