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Posted by ginevive on May 03, 2003 at 07:03:37:
We went for a several-mile walk, through chilly 40 degree weather yesterday, to check on the wood frog eggs that have been "out back" for about two weeks now. We had a nice walk, though I did slip up to my knee in Cold water. The things we go through in order to see frogs :)
Anyway, we were walking with our friend, who owns the land, who was talking about deer, birds, and everything. We showed him the massive amounts of frog eggs in the vernal pools, and he was truly amazed. Never noticed them in all the years he owned the land. It made me shudder to think that five years ago, there were huge logging trucks back there in the beginning of Spring. But the wood frogs are going strong. And the most ironic thing is, they're breeding in the water-filled tire treads from the loggers. It's still a quite thick coniferous forest, the kind that wood frogs love, and that's the only frog we have sighted besides occasional green frogs and spring peepers. We also found what we think are a. maculatum salamander eggs, a whole lot of those. The green frogs were sparsely populating a stream last year, but I see no signs of them breeding there, maybe they just drifted in as tadpoles from a larger breeding ground?
I was made happy by one statement that our landowning friend made; he never plans to drain the swampland and vernal-pool woodland, and now that he knows about the breeding frogs, he will avoid driving through the areas where they live and breed. Just a ray of hope that, though so many people are draining swampland to build malls and houses around here, a little 200-acre place is set aside for these frogs and sals. Incidentally, there's a big fiasco in nearby Amherst, because a bunch of people built homes on former swampland and they're sinking. I feel no pity for them :)
