A photographic and informational overview of the Walnut Creek watershed, part of the Raccoon River basin in Iowa. Key water-related issues are presented, along with ecological strengths.

1. Introducing the Walnut Creek Watershed Photo by Jim Riggs Unless otherwise credited, all photos & text by Lee Searles

2. Location in the Raccoon Watershed WALNUT CREEK Map source: IA DNR

3. Tributaries Map source: IA DNR

4. Tributaries, cont’d. LITTLE WALNUT NORTH WALNUT CUMMINS LIVING HISTORY BLUE KAREN ACRES ROCKLYN LITTLE WALNUT CREEK INDUSTRIAL

8. Des Moines Wastewater Reclamation Authority

17. AMERICAN COOT at DMWW

18. BLACK SNAKEROOT

19. GREEN DARNER “ Two kinds of time pass here: sitting at the edge of a sun-warmed pool watching blue dragonflies and black tadpoles. And the rapids: down the glassy-smooth tongue into a yawning trench, climb a ten-foot wall of standing water and fall into boiling, ferocious hydraulics, sucking whirlpools, drowned voices, stopped hearts.” -- Barry Lopez

20. BROWN CREEPER, Ashworth Park

21. CHINSTRAP (CANADA) GOOSE

22. BROWN SNAKE, South-of-Grand, Des Moines

23. CICADA KILLER

24. COMMON MULLEIN, Norfolk-Southern Rail Grade

25. CRANEFLY, South-of-Grand, Des Moines

26. SCAT OF WHITE-TAILED DEER, Bill Riley Trail

27. Unidentified DRAGONFLY It was sunny one evening last summer at Tinker Creek; the sun was low in the sky, upstream…. Again and again, one fish, then another, turned for a split second across the current and flash! The sun shot out from its silver side…. Something broke and something opened. I filled up like a new wineskin. I breathed an air like light; I saw a light like water…. I was ether, the leaf in the zephyr; I was fleshflake, feather, bone. -- Annie Dillard

28. EASTERN KINGBIRD, Glendale Cemetery

29. FOX SNAKE, South-of-Grand, Des Moines

30. FOX TRACKS, Greenwood Park “ I think of two landscapes--one outside the self, the other within…. The second landscape I think of is an interior one, a kind of projection within a person of a part of the exterior landscape…. The shape of the individual mind is affected by land as it is by genes.” -- Barry Lopez

31. COMMON HEMLOCK & GARLIC MUSTARD

32. GIANT LACEWING (rare?), South-of-Grand, Des Moines

33. OVENBIRD (window-kill), South-of-Grand, Des Moines

34. POKEWEED or INKBERRY

35. AILANTHUS or TREE-OF-HEAVEN (exotic), Norfolk-Southern Rail Grade

36. WHITE-TAILED DEER, Bill Riley Trail “ I love any discourse of rivers.” -- Izaak Walton

37. TRACKS OF RACCOON, Clive Greenbelt

38. HAIRSTREAK BUTTERFLY

39. Ecosystems BENTHIC, AQUATIC, SURFICIAL STREAM EDGE, BANK, TRANSITIONAL SAND & GRAVEL BAR BOTTOMLAND FOREST UNDERSTORY CANOPY FLOODPLAIN AERIAL

40. TUFTED TITMOUSE, South-of-Grand

41. RING-BILLED GULLS, DMWW “ Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.” -- Norman McLean

42. Ecosystems OUTSIDE CUTBANK PROFILE “ In the world there is nothing more submissive and weak than water. Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong, nothing can surpass it.” -- Lao-Tzu

43. WHITE-THROATED SPARROW, South-of-Grand

59. Urban

60. Urban

61. Urban

64. Urban Raccoon/Walnut confluence with Union Pacific rail line in foreground, late spring 2008 RAIL RIGHT-OF-WAYS ARE COMMON LOCATIONS FOR WATER PONDING & MOSQUITO BREEDING, ALONG WITH DENSE GROWTHS OF INVASIVE PLANTS.