Hello, I'm the OUTDOOR PROFESSOR from DiscoveringTheOutdoors.com/
Here's your outdoor tip on crawfish and their chimneys.
Crawfish can be a delicious part of the Southern cuisine. Particularly crawfish tails are great for catching a variety of fish. But what about those mud chimneys that you often see in a yard or flat area with high water table—water close to the surface? Common crawfish burrow during the late summer, spend most of their time in the fall and winter underground in tunnels filled with water, and then move to open water in swamps, ponds and lakes.
There are a large number of crawfish varieties. Most are about 3-4 inches long. Crawfish are detritivores because they break down organic materials like leaves and consume lots of microbes for protein. It has been said the crawfish eat everything and everything eats crawfish. Crawfish are inactive during the day and come out at night to feed. Crawfish predators include birds, raccoons, otters, minks, many other mammals including humans. There is a group of snakes of the genus Regina that are crawfish specialists. Just as other arthropods, crawfish have a rigid exoskeleton. This is made largely of non-living tissue and does not grow. This means they must be periodically shed making them vulnerable to predators for about two days during molt. Crawfish molt six or more times during their first year of life and are ready to reproduce by the end of that year. Molting is done once or twice a year for the remainder of their lives.
Commercially Red Crawfish or White/River Crawfish are most common. Both look red when cooked, but the Red Crawfish has heavy and thick pincers and the White have at least one long and slender pincer. Reds are in swamps and ditches and Whites are most common in deeper water such as lakes. Both can be found together and you probably get mostly Reds with a few Whites when you buy crawfish for your table.
Crawfish chimneys are smokestack-looking stacks of mud that appear in fields and yards in the spring. Each one has a crawfish living in a burrow below. Water-filled tunnels can extend down three feet or more sometimes straight down, but usually with some side tunnels and a room at the end. Sometimes the color and texture of chimney mud is different at different levels as the crawfish brings up soil from different layers to deposit the pellets on the surface. They use their legs and mouth parts to dig up mud and make into a little ball or pellet. Pellets are built on the surface like a brick layers putting bricks on a wall.
All crawfishes are capable of burrowing but there is not complete certainty as to why crawfish build chimneys. The crawfish does have to dig its burrow to be able to submerge in water beneath the water table. One idea is the crawfish has to dig its burrow in order to be able to submerge in water beneath the water table so it will not be exposed to predators. Should a predator threaten, it can drop back down in the tunnel. It may also be the chimneys job to help air flow into the burrows so that oxygen can be maintained in the water.
This is the OUTDOOR PROFESSOR from DiscoveringTheOutdoors.com/
Additional outdoor tips can be received by subscribing to the Outdoor Professor Tips on iTunes or Stitcher. If you enjoy outdoor tips, you’ll also find an e-book at Amazon.com with a collection of the Outdoor Professor Tips.
References-Additional Reading
Crawfish and Their Chimneys
http://www.americaswetlandresources.com/wildlife_ecology/plants_animals_ecology/animals/invertebrates/crawfish.html
Crawfish and Their Chimneys
http://www.loyno.edu/lucec/natural-history-writings/crawfish-and-their-chimneys
Crawfishes of Georgia
http://www.gcsu.edu/crawfishes/ecologyandlifehistory.htm
Nature Quotient.
eBook @Amazon.com
Outdoor Professor’s Tips: Exploring the Wonders of Nature
eBook @Amazon.com
No comments:
Post a Comment