Well the rain didn’t come until this morning and even then it was just a shower. Only had one marbled salamander in the pitfall traps. It was a youngster--it’s toe clip marking showed it to be one of the metamorphs from this past spring. So far that’s who’s been showing up. Usually that’s the case--the metamorphs leave the bay in the spring and don’t go very far in their first year. As a result when it comes time to return to the bay they don’t have as far to travel. The adults have further to go and for a lot of them it will take multiple rainy nights to make the trip. Imagine only being able to travel when it rains! You go as far as you can in one evening, hang out under some leaves and logs until the next rain, move a little further and so on until you reach your destination. It’s rainy pretty good this evening and should continue for a while. If I were at the bay right now I could watch them making their migration, but I’ll stick with watching the Red Sox game. Hopefully there will be a good number of critters in the pitfall traps tomorrow morning. All the adults that were ready to go and within one night’s distance could arrive. On big nights it’s important to get to the drift fence first thing in the morning---the salamanders can get overheated as the day heats up and if you have a lot in one trap they can actually drown. Good thing I think marbled salamanders are wicked cool because the plan is to be at work around 6am! Not much photo opportunities at the fence today but the turkeys were moving like crazy so took the above photo on the way to Rainbow Bay. My fingers are crossed for lots of marbleds.
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