Crawdads... Crayfish... Yabbies?

Whatever you want to call them, we've got them! On a creekside stroll today we came across a deep and clear pool in the South fork. I would guess that there were at least 3 dozen of varying sizes playing around in this pool. It was great fun to watch them swimming, which always looks preposterous to me... going backwards like that. Oregon only has one native species of crayfish, the signal crayfish. All others are invaders.

You can learn more about how to identify our native crayfish here:

http://seagrant.oregonstate.edu/sites/seagrant.oregonstate.edu/files/sgpubs/onlinepubs/e11013-accessible.pdf

We also came across this and many other sculpin (below). This little pool was the place to be this afternoon. Did you know that there are at least 300 different species of sculpin found world wide? They also don't have scales! These territorial fish are also such fun to watch.