Happy New (Herp) Year

I had the pleasure of starting the new year among friends congregated at the Sierra Vista, Arizona home of Pat Sullivan and Lisa Lee. I got to make some new friends, too, including some of the cold-blooded variety.

Pat Sullivan has a wonderful collection of pinned insects, especially scarab beetles (see ”Bug Rooms”), but he also keeps a handful of live snakes. You can’t help but be captivated by such colorful serpents as this kingsnake.

The last time I saw Pat he had sworn-off keeping venomous reptiles, but he had two on display this time. One was a truly lovely specimen of a sidewinder.
The other was a small but beautiful black-tailed rattlesnake. I have to admit I have a real fascination with the pit vipers, but have a healthy respect, too. I happen to be allergic to horses, from which antivenin is produced. Should I ever be bitten by a rattlesnake I would be in serious trouble! Behind the glass of a terrarium they can be admired closely, but safely.

Among the human guests I met was Bev Wigney, a very accomplished nature photographer who has some of her spectacular insect images in my Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America. We had corresponded over the internet, but it was serendipitous that we wound up meeting in person at the New Year’s party. Bev spends a good deal of time in Bisbee, Arizona, as well as in her home country of Canada. Be sure to check out her own blog, Journey to the Center.

After a night of eating, trading stories, and midnight toasting, some of us tucked ourselves in there at Pat and Lisa’s for the remainder of the night. This was the view I awoke to the next morning. What a way to start the year. I hope that your year starts as sweetly, and that you find 2010 to be exciting and prosperous, but also stress-free.

Pickerel Frogs

Never in my life as a naturalist have I ever seen as many frogs as I have here in western Massachusetts. They seem particularly abundant right now around ponds, rivers, even dry areas fairly far from water. Among the most common are pickerel frogs, Rana palustris.

I’ve been privileged to encounter several cooperative photographic subjects in the field at places like the High Ledges Wildlife Sanctuary and the Westfield River. One shy specimen hid under the shed at Dave Small’s house in Athol and happily gobbled up moths and other insects that, attracted by his mercury vapor light, fell to the ground beneath.

Pickerel frogs are easily mistaken for leopard frogs, Rana pipiens, the amphibian we all dissected in biology lab. Leopard frogs are identified by their round spots, while pickerel frogs have larger, nearly square blotches. Leopard frogs are in severe decline over much of their geographic range, however, due not to scalpels but to many environmental factors impacting most frogs. Acid rain, draining and filling of wetlands, and fungal disease are among the suspected reasons for their disappearance.

Pickerel frogs seem to be thriving by contrast, at least in my own experience this summer. Western Massachusetts did have an abnormally wet season, though, the wettest on record by some accounts, and there was certainly no shortage of areas for frogs to breed. It was difficult to avoid wet places in fact. Even so, I found many pickerels in perfectly dry (even downright hot) conditions at High Ledges Wildlife Sanctuary.

Male pickerel frogs call for mates by inflating a pair of vocal sacs in beneath their throat. Most references describe the sound they produce as a “snore,” but not having heard one I cannot say for myself. They started breeding from March to early May, before I arrived here.

The female frog lays her eggs in vernal (temporary) pools, usually near rivers or streams, and she is prolific. One egg mass can have from 700 to 3000 ova. Tadpoles can become frogs by the end of the summer, but it takes two years from egg to sexually mature adult.

I have to thank the people of Massachusetts for preserving a great deal of amphibian habitat; and thank the frogs themselves that were kind enough to not hop away too quickly while I fumbled with my camera. They are very photogenic, but perhaps they know that….

High Ledges

Thanks to my friend Steve Gingold I have had the pleasure of visiting the High Ledges Wildlife Sanctuary on two occasions so far this year. The refuge is located just outside of Shelburne Falls in Franklin County, Massachusetts and operated by the Massachusetts Audubon Society (“Mass Audubon” as they call it here). It is a property rich in both history and natural history.

Dr. Ellsworth “Dutch” Barnard grew up on the family farm established here in 1790. Portions of that property were included in the original 400 acres donated to Mass Audubon. Dutch taught English from 1930-1933 at what was then Massachusetts State College. He would return after decades of other professorial positions to teach at UMass from 1968-1973. He and his wife Mary spent the summers in a rustic cabin at the summit of the “Ledges” for more than fifty years. The cabin burned down a few years ago, but the chimney and a couple rock walls remain. Here is the view they enjoyed of the Deerfield River valley:

Dutch and Mary didn’t take it easy, either. They actively constructed the trails that are maintained to this day, and also identified the many plants and animals that call the sanctuary home. Twenty orchid species are known from the nearly 600 acres now encompassed by the boundaries of the reserve, and thirty species of ferns have been found there as well. I confess I didn’t even know there were that many kinds of ferns.

I saw my first pink lady’s slipper orchid there on our first trip, June 6, and this brilliant wood lily on July 11:

If you can’t visit the area yourself, and I highly recommend it, consider reading Ellsworth Barnard’s book In a Wild Place: A Natural History of High Ledges, illustrated by Charles H. Joslin, and published by the Massachusetts Audubon Society in 1998. You can also see some of Steve’s magnificent nature images from High Ledges and elsewhere at his photography website here. Thank you, Steve, for the transportation and sharing your special places with me.