Was all excited for the "big rain" we were to get over the weekend.  It only amounted to a total of 4.4mm over two days--not much to talk about.  It did make it wet enough for 40 or so marbled salamanders to leave the bay, but not much else moving.  It's sprinkling tonight and rumor has it it may rain tomorrow and Wednesday.  I'm not going to hold my breath.  But as I've said before we can always count on a ton of invertebrates to be at the fence.  We typically have a LOT of millipedes and centipedes in the buckets.  Today I tried to get a video of a centipede--they move really fast so it's not exactly in focus but at least it shows their  cool movement.  enjoy.

Happy Thanksgiving!

On Thanksgiving day I'll be thankful for many things including the wonderful invertebrates that are always at the drift fence--hot, cold, dry, or wet they are always there to keep things interesting.  We get a ton of these very large crickets and are now getting a lot of what I'll naively just call wooly bears.  Looks like our crazy summer weather should come to an end tomorrow and we'll get back to normal temperatures and some rain.  Hopefully that will mean some amphibian action for Saturday.  Rain may even come tonight so one of our dutiful bay runners (not me) got to work at the crack of dawn today to process the salamanders that left the bay the other day to make sure they got released before the next rain. Keeping the Rainbow Bay fence going is quite the commitment--no holidays missed in 30 years!


Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving!

At least mice come out to play when it's dry!

78 degrees today and dry as a bone--needless to say not the ideal weather for amphibians.  But we managed to get one southern toad and one green frog leaving the bay and one very late marbled salamander entering the bay.  A fun find was this adorable Peromyscus in one of the buckets--must admit I have a soft spot for mice.  It was very nervous, but quite healthy and happy to be released back into the woods.  We don't get these very often in the buckets, get a few shrews here and there, but not that many mice.  We get a mix of Peromyscus on site with most being white-footed mouse, cotton mouse, or oldfield mouse. 

At least the mice are active in this drought.  To give a feel for just how dry it is--Brian went to Ellenton bay the other day and went to the water gauge in the deepest part of the "wetland."  He dug down to -40 inches and still hadn't reached water.  Doesn't bode well.  Really hoping to get more Gopher frog samples this spring but will need water for that!