Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Vernal pool activity

It's that time of year again when salamanders and wood frogs head to vernal pools and spring peepers fill the air with their chorusing.  We had no luck finding migrating spotted salamanders at night, but did find quite a few under logs during the day.



These three were all tucked away under the same log.  Just a few feet away, there were plenty of eggs in the pool.




There were also some spermatophores scattered on the leaves underwater.



 Large fairy shrimp swam about, although not as many as there were a couple of weeks ago.



Other finds included two water scorpions...


dragonfly larva...


and lots of leeches and green frog tadpoles.


2 comments:

  1. I don't know if you'll see this, but I couldn't find another way to contact you!
    This blog is WONDERFUL! I found it while trying to identify a fossil I had found when I was 6 (I'm now a Freshman in college). I then got lost in all the other interesting posts, which are so beautiful and fascinating! I used to live in Ohio, where it was fairly easy to birdwatch, find crawdads and other things in streams, and look at strange plant life. Now that I'm in Utah, everything's quite different and much more sparse, so this blog is so nice to have . . . you're doing my exploring for me!

    Thank you so much, and please keep updating!

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  2. Hi Libby,
    Thanks for stopping by. We're headed to Maryland soon for more fossil hunting, so please visit again.

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