A few fun adventures the last couple of weeks. When went to check on the in-stream terrariums (See Why did the Ruffed Grouse Cross Road? and Wandering in the Water for more information about this project) to take in-term measurements in case something happens to the terrariums. Well...some time in the month between setting and checking there must have been a large storm through the area because several were washed out. A few were only slightly broken and most of the salamanders were still present. I stitched any holes together with fishing line. However, several others were completely crushed.
This happens frequently with this type of study, which is why we were taking intermediate measurements in the first place. We shall see in another few weeks how much information we have and if we want to try to do the study again next year (to get more information).
We saw this nice Mayapple flower when out at the streams.
And cinnamon ferns, the spore stalk gave off a cloud of spores when tapped.
We also saw a Turkey with about 6 chicks. They were not particularly fast, so we caught one and took obligatory selfies. After we put it down, it played dead for a bit which was bizarre. We checked on it again after we were done at the stream, but it was gone so we assume it recovered.
Right as we were leaving, we found this large black rat snake (Elaphe obseleta). It was not pleased we interrupted its basking and flared the back of its head to make itself look intimidating (imitating the shape of venomous snake's heads) before fleeing into the vegetation on the side of the road. We saw two others dead on the road on the drive home. A good reminder to watch out for snakes on the road. They are an important part of the ecosystem and there is no need to drive over them.
The next day I had off and intended to read and relax in preparation for switching to nocturnal sampling. However things don't always go according to plan, one of my lab mates lost her phone in the woods...She came back to the dorm to use the 'Find my iPhone' app. Thankfully, her phone was high enough in elevation that it had service. But we couldn't find coordinates to put into her GPS, so I offered to help. We pulled up the app on my phone and set out into the woods. We had a ways to walk before we would even be close enough to use the app (to make her phone make a sound). She knew the general place that she last had her phone, so we headed toward a couple of her study points. On the way we found this box turtle! He was not super happy about being picked up and hissed a couple times. He was clearly a survivor, as evidenced by the mussing chunk from his back and the crack in his plastron (underside). We put him back and kept moving.
When we started to get close, we tried to use the app to find her phone, but we were too far away. This is where our combined map reading skills came in handy. By looking at aerial imagery on the app and on the maps app (to see where we were) we navigated closer. One of the most distinguishing features were dead hemlock trees which stood out a stark grey against a green backdrop. We did find the phone (in case the suspense was killing you) and headed back out of the woods. When we were almost back to the road Heather stopped and when we looked down there was a medium sized garter snake. We didn't bother the snake at all (neither of us really wanted to smell like snake musk), but it got extremely agitated and puffed up both its head and body and started to strike. Of course I started filming...(see below, the yelp at the end was Heather... =] ).
That evening I decided to get out of the field station for a bit and drove up to Wayah Bald. I didn't really know what to expect, but I had driven by the road several times on the way to my field site and decided to explore. The view was beautiful, despite it being about 10 degrees colder than it was in the lower mountains (a temperature different I was not prepared for!). There were clouds rolling in as I made it to the top of the mountain which added to the experience.
The next week, we were scheduled to do our first round of Capture-Mark-Recapture for the year, this marks the beginning of the 6th year of data on these same plots. We frequently capture animals that we haven't seen for about 2 years in the same 10 m X 10 m plots. It started raining right at dark, the first rain for about a week. This made for a wet and slightly uncomfortable night for us, but all the salamanders came out to play. We found this cute little eft, which had water drops beading up on its back.
The first night we caught 125 salamanders on 6 (10 X 10 m) plots in about and hour and a half of searching. This resulted in an extremely long night of processing (measuring and marking). We ended up releasing the animals at dawn. Thankfully it was still raining so I felt less bad about letting them go when it was getting light. We found this pretty box turtle out in the rain, we helped her cross the road.
It continued to be wet, though not raining, the next two days so we were up until 5 am and caught a little less than 100 salamanders a night. We saw a few climbing animals over the 3 nights:
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| 3 climbing in this picture!! |
When processing we get to see the salamanders more closely, this one below was regrowing its foot! The process is in the early stages, but it is neat to see the foot when it still looks embryonic. :)
We found this tiny bug in a back with a salamander, despite its minuscule size, it had pinchers! I was intrigued enough to take a picture...
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| Bright red cheeks on this Ocoee salamander, sitting in some bark |
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| The face off. in situ (not posed) |
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| Climbing salmander!! |
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| Pretty hybrid, white spots and bright red legs |
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| The largest black belly salamander I have ever seen!! |
In addition to the extremely large Black belly pictured above (one of the largest salamanders in the genus) we found the smallest and most terrestrial salamander in the same genus, the pygmy salamander. It was about the size of the larger salamander's leg...It was neat to see the contrast, much less to find them on the same plot!
A couple of cool moths seen while out and about:
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| Polyphemous moth |
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| Thanks for reading! That's all for now! |
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