Walk in the woods

Took a brief walk in Wildcat this evening.   Warm, but breezy.   No real signs of spring yet...  but came upon this lovely spring pond.

PEEPERS!!!

Heard the peepers for the first time last night, as we were eating dinner.  I heard a few more when I got home tonight.     They were going gang-busters last night.  A true sign of spring.  No doubt they are out now because it's been warmer the past few days -- in the 50's.

The quackers have been silent, however -- are they all done mating already?

We have at least four types of frogs we hear round about us:  quackers, peepers, tree frogs and bullfrogs. No tree frogs or bull frogs yet.  They come later.

Not sure what kind of a frog this in, but not a Peeper, I think  -- this frog is too big.  Peepers are teeny-tiny -- less than an inch long.

And then tonight (10:45) I stepped outside and both quackers and peepers were going strong...   :-)

Frogs

Our vernal pond, March 16th 2010

Sunny today; high's in the low 50's.

Heard the first frogs of Spring in our vernal pond today.  I think in other years we may have heard them before this -- more like the last week in March.  But maybe I'm wrong.  Or maybe the fact that we got snow on Friday -- April 1st -- slowed them down.

We always hear the quackers first -- which I believe are wood frogs.  Then a few days or maybe a week later the peepers start up.   When we first moved into the house I couldn't figure out what was making the quacking sound.  First afternoon I heard them, I thought it was a madly tuned motorbike at a neighbor's house  (really!).

We've been seeing ripples in the vernal pond in recent days, and yesterday I happened to be standing at the window when I saw something moving right at the edge of the pond that is nearest our house.   Through the binos I could clearly see a Mr. and Mrs Mallard.  We had a Mallard pair last year too.  Wonder if we will get ducklings in our pond.

Quite a busy nature day today.  Out the kitchen window, we saw a lovely, likely-juvenile red-tailed hawk.  It sat for quite a while on tree branch, very still, and then swooped to the ground where it clearly caught something -- a mouse?  a chipmonk?  Couldn't tell.  Off it flew, lunch in mouth!

We visited the heron rookery today -- first time this year.  A few herons were up on the nest.  I wonder if they have started to lay eggs yet?  We are planning to go each week from now on.  We'll see if we manage to keep up with that.