Notes About Nature

  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.