11 replies to this topic

[mattknepley]

Warning- my usual sorry photos accompany this post...

Spent a few hours this afternoon checking out new collecting sites and chasing stream fishes. A couple stops turned out to be duds, running water-wise. At one stop the map had promised a small stream but I got one monster-sized beaver pond/swamp. I was disappointed, but access was easy and it would have been just wrong not to check it out. Evidence of working man lunches, and the semi-scattered, mostly-mummified remains of a pitbull on the approach to the water didn't bode well. But what the heck, let's net some gambusia and maybe pick up a surprise or two.

The upland chorus frogs and American toads were calling- two sounds I love, so that was going for it. Got to the edge of one part of the pond, and the water looked like this...

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According to my thermometer the water was 71F. Considering there was 0 turnover, the sun had been shining on it all day, and temps that afternoon were into the 70s I didn't doubt it, though it surprised me some.

Spent 20 minutes sweeping from the shore - no way I was getting in there when I was by myself! - and I didn't net so much as one single fish. But the absence of fish meant plenty of these guys...

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I have never seen larval salamanders with such chubby bodies, tiny legs and massive gills.

Then this bad-boy turned up...

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Is this a dragonfly naiad of some kind? Two or three times it opened its jaws and put them around the sallie's body, but never did pierce it that I could tell.

[Matt DeLaVega]

Tiger salamander? Toads? Around here toads are way later. It is chorus frogs calling first, then peepers start up while the chorus are still going, and both call at once. The toads are not for a good month later.

[centrarchid]

Marbled Salamander will be large already by this time of year.  Fall breeders.  What other Mole salamanders are down your way?  Tigers around here still in egg mass while Spotted'sand Smallmouths just starting to hatch or have just done so.

[centrarchid]

And the actual Mole Salamander.

[Matt DeLaVega]

Yeah, I remember that now, that they are fall breeders. Good call.

[swampfish]

The larva is a water tiger, the larva of a predacious diving beetle. It feeds on young fry and small fish but is not much of a threat to larger fish.

 

Phil Nixon

Extension Entomologist

University of Illinois

[mattknepley]

Thanks, Phil. Do they only eat fish? He sure acted like he was going to try to eat that sally. Maybe sallies taste bad to them?

Centrarchid, Marbled is a good call. We are a little out of range for Moles, and no other Ambystomas that would be likely to have young that large occur where that site is. I s'pose Tiger wouldn't be an impossibility, but doesn't seem likely from what I'm seeing in my guide.

Matt, being a native Yankee, it still seems weird to me, too, but American Toads here are calling and doin' their amphibian thing as early as February. By this time in March, all the other Bufos are starting to join in. Funny you mentioned peepers, I hadn't heard any til yesterday when I read your post. Had been wondering about them, they'd been noticeably absent to me. Was uneasy about it. Glad to hear them.

[gerald]

Most likely marbled sal, faint maybe on mole sal (rare).  Did you find any spotted sal egg masses?

[centrarchid]

Those beaver ponds used to be very important to the mole salamander clan.  When I was a kid prior to restoration of beaver populations in out area, the mole salamanders were evident only in livestock watering ponds with the exception of a version of the Smallmouth Salamander that could be found in swamp streams with few fish.  Now that beaver ponds are more abundant the breeding habitats for Spotted and Tiger Salamanders made a major comeback.  Same habitats also seem important for what I think are more natural populations of Green Sunfish, Warmouth and Creek Chubs.  Some locations will have 20 plus ponds in a little over 40 acres.

[mattknepley]

Gerald, I didn't see any egg masses, but I contained my search to about twenty feet of shoreline, and only out so far as my dipnet would reach. Hardly exaustive.

Centrarchid, anything relying on beaver ponds in our area should be making a substantial comeback, too. It's amazing how much their population has increased in the last ten years. Beaver dams are a very common sight now.

[Matt DeLaVega]

My local beavers are not dam builders. I suppose they know when it is an exercise in futility. Our higher gradient streams would simply wash them away. I do wonder how they know this. If there was not some learning going on, it would seem that they would just build them, watch them wash away, rebuild, rinse and repeat. I do find them occasionally in very sluggish boggy habitats.

Sorry, I am focusing on beaver instead of fish. Still curious.

[mikez]

Good stuff. Giving me combined with todays war weather, your post gives me Spring fever.
Beavers have exploded in Ma in the last 20 years after trapping was all but outlawed. The social trend away from fur probably is helping increase beaver even in states that still allow trapping.

Good call on the beaver pond helping the sallies. We find the "rare", protected bluespotted sallie breeding in beaver swamp that would otherwise be too fast for them.
Banded sunfish and redfinned pickerel greatly benefit from beavers and colonize new water using beaver raised H2O levels. They end up in everything from vernal pools to fire ponds to landscaping ponds otherwise isolated from near by water.