Rock Spring

Rock Spring, at milepost 330.2 of the Natchez Trace Parkway in Lauderdale County, is a small natural spring near Colbert Creek, a short way north of the Tennessee River. The Park Service describes the stream wandering through rich bottomland soil and limestone rock, with small fish in its deep pools. The state geologic map puts the ground on the Fort Payne Chert, a Mississippian limestone crowded with nodules and beds of chert, more than 330 million years old. A 2,200-foot loop trail crosses the creek on stepping stones and climbs from an old field through the bottomland onto a rocky hillside. The Park Service says beavers have built numerous dams on the creek since 1977, some later abandoned and others destroyed by high water, on what it calls a once free flowing, spring-fed stream.

The Alabama Birding Trail lists the beaver-dammed creek and its wetland as habitat for resident and wintering birds, and names the hooded warbler, the Kentucky warbler and the Louisiana waterthrush among the species that breed along the trail.

Each fall hundreds of ruby-throated hummingbirds pass through to feed on jewelweed, which the birding trail calls abundant along the wetland edges. Its guide adds that careful searching has turned up black-chinned and rufous hummingbirds, both western species that visit Alabama.