It was a dark and stormy night… last night Isaac and I sat in a parking lot with torrential rain pounding on the van, waiting for the professor to take us out into the woods to look for salamanders. It was the Bath Salamander Walk . Imagine our good fortune, that an important amphibian study is going on right here in our town!
This biology professor has been running the study for ten or eleven years. There's a three foot wall of aluminum flashing around an entire pond out there in the dark woods. And all around the edge of the flashing there are five gallon buckets set into the ground. At this time of year, the night of the first warm rain, the salamanders rise up out of the ground in the forest floor for a 300 yard radius, and proceed to to the pond to breed. The flashing fence stops them, and they walk along it to find a way in. Then they fall into a bucket, which is too deep to get out of. Then the professor picks them up, takes them to his lab, weighs, measures and photographs them. He snips their toes in specific patterns, so that he's able to identify each as an individual (work is under way to do the same thing by spot patterns– surely less invasive!). Some get radio transmitters, and all get released into the pond at the spot where they were found. In this fashion he's tracked 9,000 specific salamanders, some for as long as ten years.
So he very kindly brings people out to see what's up during the peak migration times, such as now. Last night, Isaac and I were in a group of about 15 hearty souls tramping around in our wellies. As we walked over (a parade of flashlights on a dark and wet road) he said that it was "the best night he'd seen in six or seven years." This led to high expectations, of buckets teaming with salamanders and salamanders everywhere under foot. However… no. The salamanders were barely making an appearance. Although the rain miraculously stopped and the sky turned black and star-filled, turns out it was too cold for them. The pond still had ice on it, and although the air was warm and the ground muddy, there was still a layer of frozen soil underfoot, keeping the salamanders tucked away. Still, it wasn't a total bust. WE found a few. Isaac got some props for correctly identifying the first one we looked at. "That's a male," he said. The professor was impressed. "So, do you have a job?" he asked Isaac. "What are you doing during the week? I could use some help."
We also found a few spring peepers and some red-backed salamanders, one of which was so tiny it could just perch on Isaac's fingertip. But wading through deep muck, brambles, branches occasionally lashing our faces and puddles threatening to swamp our boots, you could want a better salamander population. Last night was not THE night we were looking for. One unhappy mom said, "Yep… this is my last salamander walk ever!" But Isaac loved it nonetheless, and it ain't over yet… we'll go out again in a few days when the weather is right and then maybe we'll get lucky.