Notes About Nature

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.