"The Big Night" Vernal Pool Life - March

 At Nobscot Scout Reservation, there are a couple of vernal pools. I have been visiting one in particular, called "Nupsee Pond", frankly because it's closer to the parking lot than the rest, it isn't surrounded by thorny greenbrier vines on all sides, and it's significantly larger and more well lit than the other four vernal pools in the Nobscot area. A vernal pool is a small, freshwater pond, but what makes them so important, is that they dry up sometimes. Completely. Therefore, everything that lives there has adapted some way, some part of it's life cycle, that allows it to live on land. This means that fish can't live there, which is vital to the survival of amphibian larvae. This makes vernal pools into the amphibian breeding grounds that they are. Grey tree frogs, american toads, green frogs, eastern newts, and more breed in them. Species like the wood frog and spotted salamander can only reproduce in vernal pools. For a few rainy days in late March (assuming you live in Massachusetts), the vernal pools become deafening, as wood frogs and spring peepers emerge from hibernation, and begin to attract females with their calls. 

This type of loud rainy night is commonly called "The Big Night" by naturalists. When the first warm rainstorm of spring occurs, the ground thaws, and all the amphibians emerge, and migrate to vernal pools. They will then wait nearby the vernal pools, until the ice completely melts off from further rain, and that's when the chorus begins. Peepers and wood frogs drown out the bird's calls, and my own voice, but as of the 19th, the wood frogs were only starting up:

 

...More quietly, spotted salamanders enter the water under the cover of darkness. Hundreds. The male will grip the female's neck, in a position called amplexus which is practiced by most amphibians. When the male thinks he has persuaded the female, he will let her go, and deposit a sac of sperm, called a spermatophore which she may absorb, or ignore. The following morning, the vernal pool's bottom is dotted by the little white sacs, which were rejects. During the day, the spotted salamander will quietly waddle back onto land, and burrow itself under the leaf litter, and logs. Because of it's burrowing ability, the group of salamanders the spotted salamander belongs to are called the "mole salamanders". You have a chance of finding one if you lift up logs around the pond they were recently breeding in. I did on the 19th, and I was successful. At six inches long, this was the biggest salamander iv'e ever found in my life:

  

something makes me thing that the amphibian's breeding is only beginning. There are still patches of ice on some of the pools, and unlike after last year's big night, I couldn't find a single egg mass. The little things are just revving up. Why not save the fun for after the ice is out of the way?

All three times that I visited the vernal pool in March, I would start walking around the pond, and a flock of wood ducks would shoot up, out of the bushes, screaming and whistling the whole time. They would then flap all the way to the other vernal pool. When I went to that vernal pool, they would repeat the process and fly back. I couldn't get a decent photo. Good thing I had a trail cam in my backpack. I tied the camera to a tree, facing the water's edge. Three days later, when I checked it again, there were plenty of videos of them, as well as mallard ducks, and photos of a wading white tail deer...

Wood ducks nest inside cavities dug by woodpeckers, inside trees. In April, the eggs hatch, and the ducklings jump from the hole, and meet up with their mom in the water. I found this, near where the wood ducks were swimming. Do you think it's a wood duck nest? (Comment)

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