The Hidden Ones

I walk out to the pool each morning—the night’s frenzy so foreign, so shrouded.
Hoping to see better, in daylight, what lay hidden last night beyond the beam of my light. The quacking of Wood Frogs and piercing calls of Spring Peepers have gone with the night, though they are still here, replaced now by the raspy voices of Chorus Frogs, tucked away in the stems of plants peeking above the surface at the water’s edge.
With one step, they, too now are quiet.

Last night I stood in the same spot, within this ring of grass, a dense mat covering the bottom of the pool. Easing apart the tangled stems with my toe, careful not to tear into their world like ripping into a prize, I gently step in, and wait, still. Clusters of spermatophores shine as white flecks against the dark floor all around. Though I see nothing, they are here.
Beneath the layers of decaying grasses and leaves, the salamanders are moving.


Nocturnal and soft-bodied, from their world under ground, walking great distances under cover of night, into this water of their birth, they have returned only to breed, and leave.
No scales, no claws, no teeth--
their only defense, the darkness.

I lift my flashlight from the surface, muffling the beam under my jacket, restoring their night.
And soon, they emerge beyond the tip of my boot,
snatching a quick breath at the surface before disappearing into the black again.
The hidden ones in these spring waters.

(photos enlarge with click)

Spotted Salamander, Ambystoma maculatum, male

Vernal pools are seasonal basins of water essential to the reproduction of several amphibian species unable to breed in ponds, creeks or rivers, where fish would feed on their eggs.
Because they are often seen as nothing more than low, unattractive, swampy areas, these important habitats are drained or filled, destroying them and the unseen animals that depend on them as breeding grounds.
Studying these areas at night for a few weeks in the spring reveals the vulnerable lives often unnoticed at any other time of year.

On a warm, spring night

On a warm, spring night, I stand,
under darkness brought by the clouds, heavy with rain,
feet touching cool water, clear and still,
to hear the hundreds of small voices,
propped just above the water’s surface.

Spring Peeper, Pseudacris crucifer

Clinging to small stems,
toes strongly wrapping,
or broadly floating ahead of each step,
with eyes that glow like jewels from across the pool,
they welcome me with song
into their midnight madness.

Northern Leopard Frog, Rana pipiens

Wood Frog, Rana sylvatica

In all these others,
there is but one that is silent,
watching me,
with the gentle face
and sweet, small velvet feet
that I adore.


They have come home.

Spotted Salamander, Ambystoma maculatum, male
Little Pond Pool, Butlerville Ohio
March 5, 2009

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At the Edge

I’ve begun to check the pools again, early each morning and with more regularity. Hoping they arrived in the night, crossing the darkened fields and woods, to slip, unnoticed, into this cool water.
And, although turned a dark and rusty brown by the oak leaves lining its basin, the water remains clear--enough so, to see straight through its 13 inches of depth, to the bottom.
No spermatophores yet. Easy to distinguish, if here--small, white, gelatinous deposits of sperm left by the males at night, for the females to find later.
A clue to the presence of what, otherwise, would remain unseen.
Dark bodies, still, against the dark, leafy bottom.
Again, I find none.

(click images to enlarge)

As I bend low and peer into this quiet pool, woods around me barely touched by sunshine, it would seem I have found the essence of spring.
From water, waiting.

Ice on Wood Pool

Vernal pools are wetland areas that contain water in the spring, and, often, become dry by the end of the summer. They are necessary to the life cycle of certain amphibian species, which migrate to them and reproduce within their waters before returning to lives on land. I am waiting for 2 species of mole salamander to arrive--Jefferson Salamanders first, and Spotted Salamanders, several weeks later. Because migrations typically occur on dark, rainy nights and the adults hide from daylight beneath submerged plants and leaves, finding them can be a challenge. The white spermatophores, left on the bottom of the pool by males, are easier to discover.

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The Dawn of Spring

The only one up in a darkened house, I walk through the dim halls softly. As the sun is still many hours off, and doors closed where the others still sleep. It is this time before dawn, that I love best, before the pace of the day quickens. And in the quiet of this time, though I cannot see them, I know they are there, beginning to stir--
waiting for the hush to be lifted.
For every thing I know and love,
for now, I must remember.


The brown outside is all around--still, lifeless and waiting.
The tiniest hint of green barely showing where flowers soon will be. Beyond the flattened grass of the lawn, the garden lies as a yawning space, dark soil on which to plant.
On the hill we wait.
A night of heavy rain has knocked out the power again.

I walk slowly out, across the soft, saturated ground, past resting fields of brown grasses. Moon covered deeply in clouds, my single light scanning broadly.
Am I the only one here?
I step carefully back, into the protection of the evergreens, through to the shallow pool where I know I will soon find them and peek quietly in.
Just below the surface, only ice.
They are not yet here.
But in this warm night air, I sense their stirring, salamanders waking, just below the surface, waiting for this hush to be lifted.
For every thing I know and love,
for now, I must remember.

Last spring I monitored 2 vernal pools on our property and found that 2 species of mole salamanders use them as breeding areas. I witnessed Spotted Salamanders, Ambystoma maculatum, migrating there at the end of March, but missed the Jefferson Salamander, Ambystoma jeffersonianum, migration weeks earlier. This year, I'm hoping to catch it.
It is not known exactly what triggers mole salamanders’ movement from underground, where they live and eat until hibernating through the winter, to these pools of their birth for breeding each spring. It is thought to be factors including ground and air temperature (a 3-day mean temperature above 42 degrees), loose water within the soil (from heavy spring rain), a reversal of the soil temperature profile (surface becomes warmer than subsurface) and darkness (clouded, moonless night). Jefferson Salamanders are known to walk through snow and enter pools as soon as ice melt opens an edge.

Empty

I stand at the edge of Little Pond pool, its green, grassy basin rimmed with field flowers reaching beyond my waist. It was in this very spot that I found him last spring, my first spotted salamander, climbing over the berm to re-enter the water of his birth, and the study of my vernal pool began.

The emptiness seems a loss now, for the thousands of lives that gathered here or hatched from the egg masses, have gone. Most, moving out into the fields and woods on newly sprouted legs. The last remaining few, picked up by a solitary sandpiper—watching the vanishing water as I, slipping like sand through an hourglass.

It is this emptiness that is its essence.

February 2008

May 2008

July 2008

August 15, 2008

Autumn rains will fill the basin once more.
The pool will wait for spring.
And on a warm, rainy night in March, we will both return.

Spotted Salamander in Little Pond pool
March 2008

Vernal pools are wetlands that become dry for periods of the year, and, for that reason, cannot contain fish. Certain amphibians must use these waters for breeding so their eggs will not be eaten.
Destruction of vernal pools by draining or fill, disrupts the life cycle of Wood Frogs and several salamander species, including the Spotted and Jefferson. Each spring, these interesting animals cover great distances to return to the pools of their birth and breed again, only to find them gone.
Many states have begun vernal pool monitoring programs to ensure the health of these very important ecological areas.

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Success with salamanders

This entry documents the final chapter of my experiences with Jefferson Salamanders. For previous entries, begin here.

“How many times do I have to tell you? Stop putting everything you find in your mouth!”

You’d think they’d have the sense to know food from non-food, but my little salamanders seem to explore their world by mouthing it.
Not a problem, as long as you can spit out what you don’t like.
A serious problem, if you can’t.

Last week, I peeked in the tank one morning to find two of the crew had something stuck, as in “hopelessly lodged,” in their mouths. One, in such a way that it prevented him from opening his mouth at all; the other--one preventing him from closing it. A sticky matter, indeed!


The seeds of the Nodding Bur-Marigold float at the surface, their back-curved barbs like fishhooks in tender skin. Apparently mistaken for food, they’d been gulped—and would go neither up nor down.


In a small bowl of water on the kitchen table, I operated on my 2-inch long patients—with a pair of tweezers and the utmost concentration. Barely restraining them until I could get a grip on the bur, then working it gently loose. Minutes later, they were swimming once again in the tank.
And, of course, hungry for breakfast.
A small mark, the only reminder of the nasty, spiny encounter.




This weekend, on a cool rainy evening, I released them back to Wood pool--the few Jefferson Salamander larvae, still with bright, smiling faces. (and several Wood Frog tadpoles)



At 45 days since hatching, they’re soon to metamorphose—lose gills, crawl out onto land, and begin their adult lives, underground. They’ll return to this very same pool for only a few days each spring to breed, reuniting with others of their kind in the icy March waters, before leaving eggs behind.
I wanted to be sure they came to know this pool as their home. And completed the cycle of life in these waters. This is their ancestral pool.



How far they’ll wander from here is unknown.
And how they navigate the distance for their return each spring is also unknown.
But one thing is certain—on a rainy night in late February, under a pitch-black sky--with my flashlight, I’ll be watching.
Waiting to welcome them home.

Research conducted in Indiana in 1970,
calculated the rate of survival for this species in the wild,
from hatching to metamorphosis to be 0.7% (less than one percent).



Thanks to Mrs. Nesbit for hosting ABC Wednesday!

Rain

It’s hard to imagine, after last summer’s drought, that a rainy spring could be anything but wonderful. So many suffered in the dryness. And with spring growth, a season’s loss can be repaired.
But even for me, amphibian-loving, frog-watcher that I’ve become—this rain is too much.

Last week I arrived home from work to find a tree had swallowed my front yard. It had disappeared under the boughs of a locust.
A Leaning Locust, native to the Ozarks and southern Appalachians, one of many, persistently sprouting from every corner of my yard.
Eyeing small buildings on which they may, someday, fall.

It never seemed so large--standing by the porch, as it had for years. But, sprawled out, face down across the lawn like a waiter catching his toe on the carpet—he’s wiped out everything in his path. Cherry tree… lilac bush…
The porch is unharmed.
The softened ground, a mound—one taut root, its lifeline.

There he lay, as it continued to rain.
Until, finally, a dry day for cleanup.


And more rain.

I put on my spotted boots and trudge across the pasture, days overdue for mowing. The grass is, in places, almost knee deep.
The tractor, in the barn, still sleepy from winter’s dampness, refuses to tackle the green, wet mess.


Tractor pneumonia.
A coughing, glassy-eyed machine—we cover it and let it rest. Maybe it will get better.

I’m headed to the Wood pool, to bring a bucket of fresh water back to my tank.
The path at the edge is flooded.
The cool, rising water within has found a way out.


In the small clear streams flowing past my toes, Wood frog tadpoles scramble, frantically, upstream. Swept in the current from the surface of their quiet pool--into these leafy hollows, from which there will be no return.
Trapped beyond the edges of their home, they’re doomed.

Soon, it will be time to return the growing salamanders from the tank to the Wood pool, also—to become wild, again. And free.

I feed them a snack before heading upstairs to bed.


A small foot touches my finger and crawls into my hand.
Safe, for now.


The rains pound against the tin roof.

Last September, we were 12 inches below average in rainfall.
This spring, we are over 6 inches above average.

For the journey of my Jefferson Salamanders,
now 42 days old,
please click here.




Thanks to Mrs. Nesbit for hosting ABC Wednesday!

Look at those legs!

They peer from beneath the leafy hideouts, deep in dark water--their charming faces, bright white. Just a few Jefferson Salamander larvae, visiting from the vernal pool--and showing me the marvel of their ever-changing lives.
Daily, I peer back.

At 32 days since hatching, they're just under two inches long.
Golden brown-freckled bodies.
Brilliant white bellies.

Wide faces with ever-present smiles.



And, at last--
four legs!!

Jefferson Salamander larva, upper right
Wood Frog tadpole, lower right

Watching Woman, center



For more glimpses into the lives within my vernal pool,
from migrations to eggs and hatchlings,
click here.