Salamander walk tomorrow (Wednesday) rain or not. 9 PM.

please see FAQ for details.  We will meet at 9 pm

Salamanders were on the move last night

A few teams of students led by Scott Thomas, a graduate student in biology studying salamanders, was out getting genetic samples from salamanders last night in the greater Akron area:

Scott is interested in spatial structure of populations, as well as whether there are groups of salamanders that always breed together in a given pond over time (i.e., early vs. late breeders in any one breeding season).

I will keep you posted on a hosted walk at Steiner Woods. Stay tuned.

 

No Walk Tonight…but soon

there will be several teams of people checking for migration activity across the greater Akron area, so we will not be able to host a walk tonight.  However, we will keep you posted and expect that there will be a walk somewhere in the next two weeks, weather permitting…

2013 Migrations are coming

2013 breeding season is almost here

….that time of year, I guess. The weather looks quite promising for Sunday night, but we will be out at several locations helping one of my students so there will be no walk scheduled. If that plan changes, I will alert you here tomorrow. In the meantime, stay tuned to this site for a walk announcement soon.

Yes, I think they are done for 2012

5 salamanders this morning. It will probably stay like that for another week or two…a few stragglers every time it rains. So we are done with spotted salamanders walks.

I will host one gray treefrog walk if there is enough interest…so let me know. This will involve a walk down to the bog so you can be in the middle of a breeding chorus. This will probably start in the next two weeks or so.

Spotteds may be done….but

No spotted salamanders for the last few days. They may be done.  I cannot do a walk tonight, but it might rain late, and if any sallies come in, I will do a walk tomorrow night (another reasonable chance of rain) at least to release any that may have wandered in. I will post if the buckets have any sallies in them tomorrow.

In any case, stay tuned but don’t get your hopes up for seeing a lot of spotted salamanders this year. In fact, this morning while I was checking the buckets, I heard a gray treefrog calling; it is easily about 1 month early for them at our site. In most years, the spotteds are done by the time the treefrogs start calling. See the link below for a great Ohio website for gray treefrog and other information for Ohio.

Cleveland Museum of Natural History

Heavy fog makes spiders’ handiwork very obvious

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Just some quick pictures of various spider webs.

Also, we had about a dozen spotted salamanders come in last night, even though we had extended periods of heavy rain. They may be winding down, believe it or not. I will be doing a release tonight in case you are interested. We will meet at the usual place (see the FAQ) at 9PM if you are interested. There is no appreciable rain in the forecast for at least 5 days.