Salamander Park

I visited Salamander Park in Fox Chapel on a rainy afternoon, last Thursday. Well, it wasn't rainy when I left home, but I obviously timed my trip wrong because it certainly was when I got there.

This was my second trip there recently to see if I could find salamander eggs or larvae, or maybe wood frog eggs or larvae. No luck! This time the water level was very high indeed. The creek, which I had so recently waded in with friends to see who lives under the rocks, was completely overflowing its banks. The vernal pool where the spotted salamanders so famously breed was also much deeper. Searching with a net and a jar revealed nothing! Sigh... The park is completely covered in lesser celandine, an invasive plant that will soon have festive yellow flowers. A few spears of skunk cabbage appeared here and there. There is just nothing as vividly green as a skunk cabbage shoot. 

But just as I was beginning to give up on finding anything wonderful, the sky began to really darken. And then something cool happened. Hundreds of tiny spring peepers began to sing. I sat and listened, and as long as I was completely motionless, they approached and sang from quite close. I actually even got a glimpse of one. Their tiny size is completely disproportionate to their mighty voices. But the exact instant I moved in the slightest, their chorus would immediately cease. Their eyesight seems to be highly motion based. So if you don't move, they really don't notice you. But they are definitely attuned to the slightest movement. Listening to them sing, sitting quietly under an umbrella, it seemed completely magical to me. It was a small oasis of peace in a crazy world.

The best time to catch the songs of spring peepers is when the sky begins to darken. They have a definite preference for warm, rainy evenings. You can hear a recording of spring peepers, or any other eastern frog song here: https://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/frogquiz/index.cfm?fuseaction=main.lookup .

The creek.

A section of the vernal pool.

Skunk cabbage.

Skunk cabbage.