This is Spring

Snowflake on Red Maple

My ritual of spring has begun---with daily visits to each of my 2 vernal pools, now filled to the brim with melted snow and repeated spring rain, and nightly vigils as I wait for what I remember as clearly as if it happened just yesterday, the return of the spotted salamanders.

Vernal Pool

Lichen and Snow

But as I wait by the edge, spring steps forward and back, hesitating to make her bold entrance with a surge of warmth and bright sky. Instead, I find the ground beneath this small red maple crusted each morning with a thin but firm layer of ice. Its lichen-covered bark glows green on a clouded March morning.

Spring Snow and Spiders

Snowflakes spin on cords left by an ambitious spider who thought perhaps she’d wrap this small tree before its resident tree frog wakes and takes up its summer residence here. The water is dark and still. By noon most of winter’s remnants are gone. And the cold nights and crisp mornings of this week have filled the sap buckets that hang in the yard.

First Green

A few warm days have coaxed the first green from the earth. Tentative fingers emerge in the leaf-cluttered gardens ringing the old, brick house. Planted by a previous owner years ago, I know to expect them too. Their perfect green, soft and clean, has a tenderness barely hours old. They have brought a smile to my face--a smile that no one will see.

Another cold, clear night passes.
The day warms with sunshine until the mild air smells sweet. In the driveway, while curls of steam rise from the broad evaporating pan, gallons of maple sap steadily boil their way to become the prized amber syrup.
Beside the pool, the tangle of coarse weathered grass has become soft.
By evening, a warm rain begins to fall.

Crayfish foraging in leaves

In the dark, a brightly colored crayfish forages in the leaves caught in a crack beside the back porch floor. A steady run of rain from the roof spills onto his back as he moves slowly forward in this crevice, probing the puddles with his giant claws, sensing small bits of food with his antennae. The yard has come alive in this wet darkness.

With each step forward as I walk with my light, glistening earthworms brought to the surface to bask in the rainy night retreat hastily, disappearing to the safety of the softened ground.
And from beneath earth that lay frozen and buried beneath months of winter snow, from the woods they walk, crossing roadways, crossing lawns…stepping through my garden.

Spotted Salamander on Spring Migration

Where I first smiled a smile not seen, this time another is watching.

Spotted Salamander

The spotted salamander, Ambystoma maculatum, is one of the species of mole salamanders that lives underground for 50 weeks of the year, returning to vernal pools in the springtime for a brief 2-week period of breeding. These nocturnal and secretive amphibians are seldom seen unless encountered on their migrations to breeding pools at night.
Vernal pools seldom hold water beyond the summer months, appearing to be of little value in their empty state. Yet, to mole salamanders and wood frogs, these ephemeral wetlands are critically important.
More information about vernal pools can be found in previous posts.

Oh, my!

The neighbor’s creek roars from across the road. A night of heavy rain has brought its churning, murky waters swirling onto the pasture at the road’s edge.

Late last night I walked, warm air clouded and still, to the pools, carefully panning my light in wide arcs ahead of each slow step of my boot—hoping to find just one, woken from underground to journey home, to these pools.
Jefferson Salamanders.
Again, none.
Though, with each day’s approach to March, I know it is more likely I have missed them, made perfectly to match the blackest of these rainy spring nights.

This morning I returned to the dark water of little pond pool, and sat at the edge, last fall’s leaves from the small ring of young Red Maples, matted into the tangle of grasses not yet covered by the cool rising water. And stared out across the surface, like glass, reflecting white of another heavily clouded sky. Knowing there is much hidden here I will never see.


A slight ripple, and a visitor approaches, foraging in the debris beyond the toe of my spotted boot. A terrestrial crayfish, brought up out of his burrow across the yard, to this pool to feed. The scarlet tips of his claws not often seen, buried and muddied below the chimneys built in the middle of the lawn each summer, as he digs further and further into deep tunnels following retreating water.
Here, this morning, he seems to not notice I am following him--almost unable to look away as he works his way, inch by inch, around this basin, hoping to find what we both are looking for.

Enjoy this collection of photos.
All enlarge to show the magnificent colors dotting his exoskeleton,
from pastel blues and greens to vibrant tones of red and orange.

All crayfish are aquatic crustaceans, living in varied types of water and breathing with gills. Terrestrial crayfish, also known as burrowing crayfish or meadow crayfish, live in intricately excavated tunnels, seeking to reside below the water level within the ground, instead of within a stream or lake. By digging out small balls of clay and stacking them around the opening of a burrow, he digs lower and lower, seeking the water he needs to survive. The resulting 6-inch chimneys stacked above ground may be visible in the middle of an open field of grass.
In times of high water, as these areas flood, the crayfish emerge and walk or swim in puddles, retreating to the burrow, as the waters also recede.

Crayfish chimney in field

Cambarus diogenes (?)

More Camera Critters here.

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