30 January 2013

This morning started off pretty bad. About 2:30 this morning, Jenna's Grandma passed away. She was a very sweet lady and she will be missed a great deal. Although Jenna wanted to be with her family, she had some stuff she had to do at work. So we both went to work in the morning, hoping to get gone by early afternoon.

Some of our friends have been having a White-Winged Crossbill come to their bird feeder here in Columbia. We had tired a couple of times to see it and failed. While still in town, we got another call that the bird was back. So, we tried again. We stayed about an hour and the bird never showed. Jenna and I were both hoping to see it since it would be a life bird for both of us. We think they're making it up. :) Just kidding, Matt and Amanda. We know they know what they're talking about. Amanda actually got some pretty good pictures of the bird. It does go to show however, that it's hard to predict nature and that we should always be aware if we want to see cool things. That bird shouldn't be here in Missouri, on a feeder in the middle of town, and with no conifers anywhere in sight. Some people just get lucky. :)

29 January 2013

Apparently I have horrible dedication to this blog. How hard can it be to write every time I go out? Yesterday (28January) was a pretty nice day for January in Missouri. Yesterday's high was 77 degrees. That broke the record by ten degrees. During my lunch hour I took a walk at a park close to my work. I walked in the low area next to the creek and flipped a lot of logs. Although the ground was really muddy, the logs were still mostly frozen to the ground. So after about 15 minutes I turned my attention to the birds. There wasn't much variety (checklist here), but I spent a good deal of time trying to get close to some brown creepers. I didn't get any great photos, but one of the photos is in the eBird checklist link above.

On to today. It rained. 1.99 inches recorded here at the University farm. We broke another high temperature by reaching 70 degrees, although it was in the morning. It cooled off throughout the day, and by the time Jenna got home from work at 5:40pm, it was in the mid 50s. We decided we'd try our luck at salamanders again tonight. I really didn't expect to see much since the lows were supposed to be in the low 30s overnight with up to an inch of snow predicted on 30 January. But how are we going to know in the future if a night like tonight is good if we don't try.

On our way to a spot in Callaway County, MO we were almost involved in an accident. As I mentioned earlier, it was pouring down rain. Someone in a car was in a major hurry as we headed east. They hadn't cleared the front of my truck by more than 3 car lengths when they started to fishtail. I started slowing down as fast as I could without losing control myself or getting rear ended. The car turned sideways in front of us and then hit the concrete barrier on the inside. That bounced him back out into traffic where he continued spinning and somehow hit the inside barrier again. That then sent him spinning across three lanes of traffic directly in front of us. He hit the concrete barrier on the outside, spun around so his driver's door was broadside to oncoming traffic, came almost completely into our lane, and finally stopped. He hit the walls three times, and made at least 5 complete spins. It all happened so fast that I wasn't able to come to a complete stop. Thankfully by the time he stopped I was going slow enough to go partly into the left lane to get around him. We pulled over a little ways past the accident, partly to regain my composure, but mostly to call 911. It was way too dangerous of a spot to get out of the truck and check on them. Besides, traffic was already stopping way behind the accident because three lanes had now been reduced to one.

On to herping again. We finally reached our spot. My shoulders and back were extremely stiff from being so tense, so I need a good hike. We walked a little ways into the woods to a pond. We had barely got there when Jenna said, "Spotted!" Sure enough. Now I was really wishing it wasn't pouring down rain so I could have brought my camera out. We had a little point and shoot camera, so we did get some photos even if they aren't the best quality. Here is a picture of the Spotted Salamander.

We looked around a few different areas in Callaway County and came up with 4 Smallmouth Salamanders, a couple Green Frogs, and some Green Frog tadpoles. Here's Jenna with a Smallmouth Salamander.

It was about 8:45pm when we got to a park in Boone County. This place has a kiosk talking about Spotted Salamanders, so it's got to be wonderful, right? Well, it was pretty good for Smallmouth Salamanders. We had 52 of them here. We also had calling Boreal Chorus Frogs and Green Frogs. That was all the herps, but we had four species of birds: Barred Owl, Canada Goose, Northern Cardinal, and Swamp Sparrow. I didn't think that was too bad for being pitch black in the rain. We also had a Grassland Crayfish and a couple Horsehair Worms. If you don't know what a horsehair worm is, I suggest this Wikipedia article. Here are a few more pictures.

 Smallmouth Salamander (A. texanum)

 Smallmouth Salamander (A. texanum)

 Smallmouth Salamander (A. texanum)

 Grassland Crayfish (P. gracilis)

Horsehair Worm (Nematomorpha spp.)

Thanks to Jenna for letting me use her pictures in this post

  27 January 2013

Jenna and I spent most of the afternoon outside. During our hiking we were discussing that we needed to keep notes about our excursions so we could learn more from them. Sure, we learn some by subconsciously just being out there, but it is hard to determine patterns and we know we don't remember everything. For example, what date did we observe the massive Smallmouth Salamander (A. texanum) migration last year? I could tell you the place, but I couldn't tell you the date other than to say it was in the spring. Except for in this instance I did have some record because I entered the sightings into NAHERP.com. NAHERP is a database that stores sighting along with their voucher photos and related information. Scientist can use this information in their studies. So on March 12, 2012, Jenna and I observed 141 A. texanum. Although I still plan to enter sightings into NAHERP this blog will let me describe the event to the extent that I would like.

Okay, that was starting to get off topic. As I was saying, we spent most of the afternoon outdoors. It drizzled a little last night and when we woke up the temperature was hovering right around freezing. We finally made it out about 11:45 with a temperature in the upper 40s. We started off by going to a park in northern Columbia. Our main goal was to check water levels in the ponds. We discovered that the ponds were almost dry. The marsh area was totally void of water. The deepest pond still had a little water, but when we walked to the water's edge we could tell that our heads would normally be underwater according to the plants up the bank. It'll be interesting to see how coming off a year of "extreme drought" affects the amphibians. So all that was left was to bird. We ended up with 32 species in just under an hour and a half.

The temperature was still rising this evening. We decided to go out about 7pm to see if we could find any amphibian movement. The temperature was up to about 56 degrees. It had rained enough that all of the puddles in the trail were full, but no water in the ponds. We took to the woods and started flipping logs. Absolutely nothing. In fact, the only insects we saw were spiders eye shine. The logs were still very frosty where they contacted the ground. Our only wildlife sighting of the night was seeing the eyes of eight deer when our lights crossed over them. It would be interesting to know that if warm temperatures like tonight would have yielded different results this early in the year had there been the drought in 2012.