Spring; Time for Roman orgies in the woods

Now the sentence you’ve all been waiting for. Lets take a moment and talk about salamanders.

Swit swoo

Temperatures above freezing at night along with some ice melting rains, means that the breeding migration of numerous salamanders and woodland frogs is underway across the six states of New England. In the next few weeks, sex-hopeful salamanders and frisky frogs will emerge from the thawing woodlands and travel to their moist pools to make sweet sweet love and lay their eggs. Many species will navigate to open wetlands for what I can only describe as a giant, amphibian, Roman style orgy…with slightly colder water and less fruit.

Bowchikawowow..

Unfortunately, many poor, sex starved critters won’t make it and will perish in people’s yards, on busy roads, flounder in open fields and will undoubtedly become tasty morsels for other spring-craving, organic food lovers (I’m not talking about the American people). One thing that happens here, and something I unfortunately missed out on helping with this week, was to join the groups of nature volunteers that sit by busy roads whilst the migrations take place. Hundreds of randy amphibians sadly, have had roads built between their winter retreats and their summer love cabins. Some of the locals here, volunteer and direct traffic to help the horny croakers across the roads in the precise week each year that they are due to migrate.

We should have discussed it before we left home

I managed to see some early frogs come out to warm themselves in their defrosted sun-splashed pool, but like many things in nature that run like clockwork, it’s always a week from when the first frogs to the first salamander movements begin. I missed the colourful non-jumpers this time around but maybe I might see some Spring Peepers (that’s not a euphemism) or Leopard Frogs when I reach upstate New York.