We spent the morning enjoying yarn and fiber animals at the Mass Sheep and Wool Fest in Cummington, Massachusetts, 2 1/2 hours west of home. It's always a fun show and we've made it an annual event... hitting the show, then having lunch and ice cream at a local yummy-shop, then herping at Windsor State Forest. Last year, we had the incredible toad-porn day that we wrote about here: http://hitmewithyournaturestick.blogspot.com/2011/05/may-28th-all-out-toad-orgy-in-windsor.html
At the show, I flipped a few things but turned up nothing. A Daring Jumping Spider jumped on to my leg at one point, though!
After the Festival, we went for some lunch. Behind the Creamery, I flipped and found the year's first Red Eft!
Efts are the second stage of the Red Spotted, or Eastern Newt. They start as mini-aquatic larvae, then leave the water to be Efts for 3 or so years. Then they return to the water as adults.
Upon hitting our place in the forest (in Williamsburg, MA), Andrea found another Red Eft! Smaller, but no less adorable!
Not to let the newts get all of the amphibian love, this thin Redback made his presence known!
Now, the place we herp at USED to be a campground, was staffed and it was sometimes fairly crowded. Last year it closed. We weren't positive if we were trespassing, but there were no Posted signs, so we took our chances. A DCR officer showed up and assured us that we were OK! *whew*
Andrea saw a Garter Snake whoosh off into a pile of rocks that I was perusing. She could still see him...
He was easy enough to gently extricate for a few close-ups.
Obviously, he'll be wearing a new suit of clothes very soon.
It was buggy as hell, so we wimped out and didn't go into the woods TOO deeply. A lucky flip provided something completely new to us... a Redback Salamander! What, you say??? Redbacks are in every post, you bald-headed shit slice! Not like THIS one, though!!
This is an Erythristic phase Redback... no black on the sides! We have never seen one of these in our many years of herping!
OK, now THAT was cool!
Eastern Tiger Swallowtails were abundant...
In fact there was an orgy going on!!
I flipped a rock and found our first Wood Frog of the year; a species that always gets under-represented on this blog.
Next, we saw this Fowler's Toad hopping along...
He had some bumps on his belly and trilled and peeped (and peed) in my hand.
He was to be our only toad here... a far cry from last year's visit! (See link above...)
BUT, they were at it not long ago... the Westfield River that chugs through the park was filthy with toad eggs!
A couple of small Pickerel Frogs jumped into grass clumps before we could photograph them. Andrea saw me chasing a hopping thing along the rocks and I finally got our first Pickerel to photograph this year!
He was calm enough to just sit in my hand!
Along the top part of the rocky beach, I saw a small tail slip by... a young Garter Snake (also in the blue) was up there!
This shot shows you just how beautiful the area is!
A couple of more normal-phase Redbacks ended our time there.
Driving in, we had seen some pull-off areas and decided to check a couple of them out. At most of them, the river was too strong to bother looking for animals, but one had some rocks that had little pools in them. Guess what was in one of the pools... Adult Red Spotted Newts!!!! We haven't seen these guys in years! This is a first for this blog!
There were 3 in this tiny pool. It has everything they need... water, leaves, food...
These adults have retained the lungs they grew when in the Eft stage. We saw them coming up from time to time to gulp some air.
So... pretty cool, huh! We made it back in time to hit a party at the Oakland Lounge... hosted by the only person who is known to read this blog! Hi Kirsten!
