Lake Martin Magazine

The Spotted Dusky Salamander, known by scientists as Desmognathus conanti, is a relatively stout, brown salamander with a moderately keeled tail that serves as a vertical paddle when swimming. It’s found all across Alabama, and its range includes most of the Southern United States, from Louisiana to South Carolina.

If you see a large hawk around Lake Martin this time of year, there’s a good chance it’s a red-tailed hawk. There’s also a good chance you can’t tell. Red-tailed hawks are the most common hawk in North America and they are most often seen in the Lake Martin area during the winter months, when northern birds head to warmer climates.

Painted turtles, like American toads, dragonflies and lightning bugs, are among the native wild animals that play a big role in many Southern children’s lives. Most children have, at one time or another, played with painted turtles. Many have kept them as pets.

The northern cardinal, the brown thrasher, the tufted titmouse, the indigo bunting, the red-bellied woodpecker and the great blue heron. These are just a few of the birds that can be found on the new Piedmont Plateau Birding Trail.

Clusters of bright purple or magenta berries lining up on a stem are a dead-giveaway for the distinctive, useful and very well named American beautyberry shrub. It’s one of the most striking plants you’ll see in the deep woods around Lake Martin during the early fall.

As you might guess from its common name, the Chinese praying mantis isn’t an American native. But it’s certainly a “naturalized citizen,” having been imported to New England in 1895 to help control native garden pests. It did its job well – so well, in fact, that people are still selling Tendodera sinsensis egg cases in garden specialty stories all across the U.S.

He served as commander of the Naval Air Force U.S. Atlantic Fleet and was the first commanding officer of the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, but Rear Admiral John W. “Bill” Goodwin is overseeing a different kind of fleet now.

After July’s rains, chanterelles are pushing up through the newly moist soil and coloring the forest floor around Lake Martin with dabs of yellow-gold.

You’d be hard put to find a more interesting, useful, loved and despised plant than the cattail.

It’s a natural occurrence so bizarre and unusual that now people all around the eastern U.S. are buzzing about it too – the 13-year cicada invasion.