This Curious Frog

Water Plantain around vernal pool

It’s been weeks since I’ve walked these waters—the flattened remnant of what had been the old farm’s pond, now shallow and holding water only until late summer, when August heat dries it, and weeds fill its basin with growth.
This year, though, frequent spells of rain, broken only by days that have given us “the coolest July on record” have kept it well-filled—almost toppling over the rim of my boots, as I walk a slow arc, past the thick green stems, the ring broken only in a few places by the paths of muskrats crossing to the surrounding fields from their burrow on the bank beside me.


The lives of the water have left it now—
salamanders and frogs hatching from eggs left here in great floating masses on the first warm nights of spring, have walked away—
on new legs, to lives on land.

Baby Tree Frog, newly emerged

Just a few of the very last to use this small pool linger now, at the edge.
Tiny Tree Frogs, some still with a vestige of tadpole tail, have found safety in the thick green of the ring.
And glow like enameled jewels against green leaves.
Barely half an inch long, minuscule fingers of glass,
even so small, the padded toe reaches and grasps--climbing carefully.
I so love this curious frog.

baby Cope's Gray Tree Frog

Check out the color!
(all photos click to enlarge)

Night Life

If you could see this darkness, feel this night,
heavy under clouds, dripping with dew,
thick with frogs and moths, drawn to the first blushing blooms of milkweed,
you would know what it is to walk here.

It’s been weeks since I have visited my pools, as in the probing visit of this night--
most days just a cursory glance, as I walk on to the woods,
following the wings of dragonflies,
watching birds high in the trees above.

Yes, the shallow water remains.
And, though almost choked with a mat of green snarls encroaching from every edge, the deep, clear, dark water sustains life, napping through the sunshine of a hot summer day.
But, tonight, when, even through a closed window, air conditioner groaning beneath this blanket of humidity, frog song penetrates to within a brick house, I cannot help but wander there.
Every bit of this field is calling.


Orange eyes aglow, hundreds of buff-colored moths, feathery antennae curling back and forth, feed at the heavy heads of grasses, bending their arching stems low to the ground, and cover the large, rosy globes of milkweed blossoms, strong and sweet with nectar.


The heat from a very warm day has remained into the night. Glass beads on every blade of grass glisten with dew. My bare arms as well, quickly covered with a layer of moisture, soon tingle with an itch from every flying insect drawn to me, my light a beacon into blackness that readily swallows it. Even my face, misted and framed in curls brought on by this bath of steaminess, especially interesting to the smallest moths, darting in darkness past mouth, nose, eyes and ears.
A head net, next time--I must remember that.

Northern Leopard Frog, Rana pipiens

Waist-deep in vigorously growing poison ivy, I wade through green to the pool’s edge, my tall spotted boots stepping carefully into the cool water, the soft, woven mat, broken in places perfect for even the largest of frogs to hide in wait.

American Bullfrog, Rana catesbeiana

All across the surface of the smooth water, small mouths rise to grab air, then disappear with the flash of an ivory belly to hide themselves in layers of brown detritus, inches deep beneath my feet.
Shapes I recognize easily—and was hoping to see tonight, caught in the beam of my light through cola-colored water--salamander nymphs, still sporting gills like Elizabethan collars, but soon to lose them, strengthen new legs and walk off to the woods. Having started the season dry, this spring has brought heavy and frequent rains—a good chance that the water will remain weeks longer, and another generation graduate to lives on land.

The movement of a winding, striped form beside my toe startles me. And, though I know he should be here, I’ve never seen him--a Northern Water Snake, browsing the brown bottom, rising to look across the surface. Then, equally startled by finding me in his pool, he dashes below and disappears.

Northern Water Snake, Nerodia sipedon

From the center of this basin, I am surrounded.
First by the ring of dark water, then by the green at its edge. Framed by small Red maples, their toes wet.
It is as if I am drawn into a fanciful scene, where all possible life converges in a single place for a moment--the deer, rabbit, and raccoon, beside bluebird, mink and snake, while fish, frog and turtle swim.
A snapshot, so complete, yet unlikely.

Cope's Gray Treefrog, Hyla chrysoscelis

Yet, as I move toward his fervent call, raised to the night air, as others do the same, I am sure, for this moment, I am witness to a collision of lives not always like this.

Stirred from quiet rest, postured to project,
their song from every tree,
“Welcome to my world. We’ve been expecting you!”

Cope's Gray Treefrog
vocal sac inflated

(all photos enlarge with a click)

Slice of Life

The air is sweet with honeysuckle, thick with frogsong—and a heaviness that wishes for rain.
Ahead of my steps along the path, small Woodfrogs and even tinier Spring Peepers, several weeks ago nothing more than specks of black within the clouded gelatinous masses floating in Little Pond Pool, scurry to bury themselves in a tangle of uncut grass—their safety, a hasty retreat.
While, poised and patient, the treefrog, noisy into the night with song, waits for me to pass. Long, knobby toes curled carefully, stepping and sticking tight, his safety--hiding in plain sight.

Cope's Gray Treefrog, Hyla chrysoscelis
(Green color phase to match his surroundings)

click photos to enlarge

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Moments

Magnolia Blossoms

Last week’s snow fell, fortunately, lightly, to spring spiders’ draped cords, hanging.
A lively, green backdrop to crystals--so strange.
As if, at once, both winter and spring shared one space. For a moment.


In the shallow edge of Little Pond pool, where blossoms have turned to keys on bare branches, last year’s fallen leaves fade--red to black, in clear water.
Until the new and green rounds out their forms, they are both here, and not.

Maple Keys above

Fallen Leaves in Water
Red Maple, Acer rubrum

While in the woods, quietly resting, in the oak leaf-lined basin of Wood pool, dark tannin-stained water hides the masses of eggs. Soon larval salamanders will feed here, this pool overflowing with mosquitoes wriggling, tail upward at the surface.

Spotted Salamander egg masses
(look like potatoes on bottom of pool)

Mosquito larvae at surface
(click to enlarge)

This intricate puzzle of days,
layer upon layer,
fingers laced so perfectly, together,
lays moment upon moment.

Keys of Red Maple, Acer rubrum

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Promises, promises, promises...

Spring has kept her promise in two days’ heavy rain.
Unlocking the green on every branch,
nudging the graceful stems rising--topped with fat bundles, ready to burst.
And even in such a simple act as a stroll across the yard,
I can sense with every soft step, the fullness—
abundance waiting to be coaxed from the earth.

I walked on the night between them,
when a break in the clouds drew me up and out into the night air. With my flashlight catching every clean droplet, in colors so strong, wet beneath rain. Only the finest mist hung low, then, over the field, a lacy shawl gently wrapped around bare shoulders.
And, into a night sprinkled with stars, I stood between 2 owls calling.

Stepping out again the next morning, into a brief patch of sun, I find I was not the only one, busy in last night’s darkness. All across the field, wound thickly on tall brown stems, the work of small sheet-weaving spiders, snagging small drops from the heavy morning mist, setting this table with its finest.

A Collection of Bowl and Doily spider webs,
Frontinella communis

all photos click to enlarge

And, in the pools, the promise kept, of life’s return each spring.
From those who walk without a worry,
while I worry they will not walk.

Salamander egg masses in Little Pond Pool,
in different stages of embryonic development

Webs on Autumn Olive

Phoebe behind Pond

The nature of Nature

Like the gardener’s proud memory of that perfectly plump tomato plucked from the vine before last season’s frost, our great successes often lead us to believe we will find the same, again.
We search and hope, and often leave empty-handed.
For that is the nature of Nature.

The pools this year are oddly quiet.
With the image of dozens of spotted forms tumbling over one another in the cool water, then rising to the surface to grab breaths of air before returning to their midnight dance replaying excitedly in my mind from last spring, I’ve waited alone by the water’s edge each night, to find barely of trace of them here this year.
The dark water is still.
And in the beam of my light, I find only one,
motionless, on the oak leaf floor of this pool.

The frogs are quieter, too—
the gelatinous, silvery egg masses that almost covered the narrower reaches of water, this time, are just a few, solitary softball-sized clumps. And the riotous croaking and clasping of masked males boldly floating upon the surface has been replaced by a handful of casual callers--
a voice here, a voice there,
quickly quieted by the beam of my sweeping light.

Flock of Cedar Waxwings in tree overhead

And so I find myself, on this bright afternoon, looking out across the surface of Little Pond pool from the warm, dry grass of the berm--
wondering what has happened to all I had hoped, rather, expected, to see in this small basin.
Was last year's wonder too perfect to be replayed?

Or, is this dry spring moving more slowly, drawing them out one by one, rather than in the more visible large numbers? Or have the several especially dry summers starved them and baked them as they fought the drought from the parched tunnels of the woods and fields?

Or is this simply a reminder of the nature of Nature?
Wildly wonderful, ever changing.

Cedar Waxwings, Bombycilla cedrorum

Hello!

It has been a very dry spring--one many would choose, eager for the warmth and beautiful rays of sunshine to follow this gray winter.
I, too, turn my face upward and draw it deeply in, yet it is not as it should be--
for this season is one of wetness.

I walk through the brown, dried, tangled grasses of the field, into the woods surrounding Wood Pool, shallower and already less wide than last year, my boots tossing the light, crisp leaves ahead of each step, scuffing along the dry trail.
And I wonder how they will walk here, tender bodies, without the softness left by rain.

Several males are already in Little Pond Pool, from journeys days ago, when light rain over warm earth released them to walk to this water. Each night I spent watching and waiting by the trail at midnight, hoping to meet them before losing them into the darkness of the pool. And, though I see their spotted bodies flash and turn below the water’s surface, it does not feel the same to find them already here.
I miss the walking.

Perhaps because this remarkable migration defines them.
Gathering these solitary beings for just several days into small pools of spring rain.
From adjacent fields and woods, acres beyond these borders, across roads and fences, they will return home.
Then, again, go off to disappear below the ground.

This evening dark clouds brought a beautiful rain.
And the grass glistened and shone brightly in the beam of my flashlight. I turned my face upward and drank in the damp night air.
And it was as I had hoped—
a salamander rain.

Spotted Salamander. Ambystoma maculatum, female
walking to Little Pond Pool
March 8, 2009

Another male (?)

Is there a sweeter, smiling face?

Spotted Salamander, female


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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.