Fallon Park, just northeast of Five Points, and sloping with its long narrow shape down to Crabtree Creek at Anderson Drive, is a long necklace in Raleigh’s park jewels. The remains of a small mill structure lend even more interest to a wonderful rockfall along the creek that defines the park. Fallon Creek is short : its headwaters gather right in the front yards of the very well appointed houses along White Oak Road off Anderson Drive. The long skinny park has an unpaved path that is heavily used by joggers, walkers and doggers. I never go on the weekend, but I have such fond memories of going there on weekday afternoons with my small children, chasing crawfish in the rockpools and climbing around the old mill structure. It is a clean, rock-filled creek with a wide range of trees and plants arranged around its slopes. There are small grass meadows at the top and bottom. It serves a surrounding community that maintains rich, semi-organic plantings in its large yards, and it drains steep wooded slopes with older houses and little construction. The creek’s quality reflects all of that.
Rockpools where Lily and Dori and I fished many times.
Rockfall and brick mill structure.
Fallon Park photo tour
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I posted at Raleigh Rambles about the Carolina Farm Stewardship’s farm tour. It was a fun couple of drives, and we saw plenty of nature to go along with the agriculture, as pictured below.
Above, a native plant area at the Piedmont Biofuel Lab Farm. Below a large bird, perhaps a raven , that swooped down toward the highway for some time in front of us. I suppose it’s probably a vulture, but it certainly didn’t act like one.
After Tropical Storm Hannah came through on Saturday, September 6, 2008, Crabtree Creek flooded the intersection of Hodges Road and Atlantic Avenue and also several sections of the Middle Creek portion of the Raleigh greenway.
above is the greenway underpass below Atlantic Ave. Below is the same view 9/6/08.
This is the first time the greenway has flooded since October 2007 by my count.
creek levels post on Pecans & Mistletoe
photo album of Crabtree flooding after Hannah
There is not a lot to update on the earlier post about Fletcher Park’s new water park, which remains in a distinctly unlovely stage of construction, but this project is interesting from several angles and seems worth another look. The large cavities being excavated from the red clay are designed to hold the water headed down to Pigeon House Creek, which is the long-suffering waterway that parallels Capital Boulevard as it flows north toward its intersection with Crabtree Creek at Raleigh Swamp. What look like huge pits will allow the water to deposit sediment and be filtered by plant activity before flowing on down the hill.
A nice description of the benefits, which include hopes for “A new ecosystem for this area of the park [with] butterflies, dragonflies, and frogs, among other animal species, “ can be found at The Raleigh Connoiseur. But that post was in May, and the plan was for the water garden to be finished soon after. But there it sits. The upper pool shown below will cascade or slide down to the larger lower pool.
This site was a Methodist orphanage, built in 1900 and still operating well into my lifetime. The City purchased the property in 1982 and named the park for A.J. Fletcher’s recreation-loving son. Fred Fletcher was inducted into the Raleigh Hall of Fame in 2007.
The outlet seen above is the water’s exit toward Pigeon House Creek. From this point the water dives underground and is piped under the railroad line and across N. West Street. I cannot find a spot to view that intersection yet. Below is a picture of Pigeon House Creek just downstream. We will follow it’s grim journey down Capital sometime soon.
Fletcher Park and Pigeon House Creek photo album
lower Longview Lake from south
This is the first picture I took with my new camera for this blog, in late January 2007. Longview Lake was the big body of water in my childhood. I was more familiar with the upper section, just below Enloe, which has been surrounded by development and is filling up with silt. This lower section is in good shape, and some of the homes have small docks, of which I’m quite envious.
Longview temporarily collects the waters of Bertie Creek, coming down Bertie Drive below Enloe, which then crosses Milburnie at Peartree Lane and makes its way down to Crabtree as seen below. This lowest stretch of Bertie, which parallels Milburnie and crosses under Buckeye Trail’s beginning, gets some interesting visitors exploring upstream from the larger creek. Just below the Buckeye bridge over it, the small creek pools up, and I have seen large sliders and snappers meditating a climb over the partly submerged sewer pipe blocking their way. Above the greenway bridge, there are some nice rock riffles, and I was once amazed ( and too startled to act) by lifting up a large flat rock to reveal an Amphiuma - my only sight ever of this huge, biting salamander.
Bertie Creek hits Crabtree
Crabtree and Bertie enclose a diagonal of East Raleigh neighborhood, east Rollingwood, that is bordered by rich upland woods. These high areas surround a large rock outcrop that turns the creek right after it has absorbed the waters of Marsh Creek. That union, Marsh Creek and Crabtree, creates a huge marshy area highlighted by Raleigh Swamp at Capital Boulevard. Below that, after the rocky overhang, Crabtree is steadily on its way to becoming a coastal plain waterway. It’s flat, meandering path is lined with deep, silt-lined walls of clay, gouged regularly by floods. It is not a pretty creek - the banks give the impression of accumulated eons of ring around the bathtub. But there are interesting tangles of trees and the occasional surprise.
Marsh Creek floodplain from Rollingwood
Crabtree at Milburnie
This “surprise” was a heron which scattered from behind a sewer tower and managed to get caught in my uplifting camera lense. As I’ve
mentioned elsewhere, this easternmost section of Buckeye is very “birdy,” with all three kinds of local woodpeckers, hawks being harassed by crows, and plenty of herons.
Nature News
The Wake County Quarterly
Here, like usual, are so many opportunities to learn about and interact with nature. Even if you don’t need the structured activities, it’s nice to be reminded of the beavers at Blue Jay Point, the farm history at Oak View Park, the bats at Crowder Park on Ten-ten, and the restored gristmill at Yates Mill.
This post was originally published in May 2008
This owl swooped down and landed on a branch directly above Crabtree Creek as I walked on the high greenway that traverses a steep hill off Capital Boulevard. This is just east of the sad section that has recently had its woody buffer appropriated by bulldozers.
It sat there for the 20 minutes or so I watched it from different angles. I believe it’s a Barn Owl. This was about half hour before dusk. The owl was getting ready for work.
The owl is somewhere in the scene below. Crabtree takes a sharp bend as it approaches Capital Boulevard near the beltline. It is turned by a large rock outcrop that underlies the hill on which a large former car dealership resides, framed by the south ramp off the beltline. The slope from the back of the car dealership down to the creek is some really interesting terrain, and the troublesome but dramatic walkway that clings to the hillside is one of my favorite stretches in the whole system. One reason being it’s a great place to spot turtles, as you will see below. (snapper story below that)
Below is the rock that turns Crabtree.
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Snapper Lays Eggs
The family of one of my students had a female snapping turtle crawl up into a sandy area near their backyard creek and lay some eggs. She finished and went on back to the creek, and now they get to watch for babies. Good luck to Carson and her family!
This post was originally published on May 18, 2008
The Wakefield Ecology Club
I made my first public appearance as The Raleigh Naturalist by presenting to the Ecology Club at Wakefield Middle School! I took my naturing vest, bursting with loupes, dissection kits, pocket guides and other paraphernalia. I took my naturing briefcase, more of a suitcase with topography maps, geology binder, park guides and my hand-built tree scrapbook. I also had my camera bag and hat. I gave a show and tell with all of that and talked to them about founding an Ecology Club at Enloe and also about my daughter Lily’s Envirothon work there (much more recently!).
This is my walking cabinet of nature resources. I am mostly done color coding the watersheds on the large map. The vest weighs 13 pounds.
The Wakefield Ecology Club was a great group of kids, led by Ms. Cindy Bowling, who invited me. They meet each week and perform recycling chores at Wakefield, plus try to learn more about their environment from guests. They knew lots of great stuff about conservation, invasive species, and native wildlife. We played a quiz game and I rewarded them with conservation goody packets put together by Lily last summer as a service project. All of the students showed excellent interest in the issues. The Wakefield MS campus is lovely. Below are some nature images from their campus.
These blackberries will taste good soon! Below is a rockfall with some really nifty “man-made conglomerate” - some nice high-iron stone encased in concrete.
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More Nature News
The News and Observer just teemed with good nature news this week. Durant Park has become a part of the Piedmont Birder’s Trail. Repairs have finally been completed on the section of Greenway between Capital Boulevard and Atlantic Avenue. This stretch of greenway was also featured in a “best greenways” survey by Joe Miller. Links below.
Piedmont Bird Trail
Middle Crabtree Greenway opens!
Favorite Greenways
Triangle Greenways Guide
