Barred Owls But No Salamanders

This morning's view of the vernal pool, with most of the ice melted and filled with water from snowmelt and rain. (Photo by Don Comis)

Oz, a barred owl held by Mrs. Vann, a.k.a. Manon Van Schoyck, executive director of Ohio NatureEducation--a private nonprofit organization dedicated to caring for animals, like Oz, that can no longer survive in the wild.  Oz's wild days ended when he got hopelessly tangled in a soccer net.  (Photo by Don Comis)

  
With all the conditions seeming right for a salamander/amphibian migration this morning--temperature in the high 40's Fahrenheit, rain, and temperatures in the 60's yesterday--I decided to brave the rain and check out the vernal pool in Gambier, Ohio.

I had no luck but did scare up a little creature, a mammal that looked like something other than a squirrel.  Since it was just at daybreak and the light was still low and it was running from the river toward the woods, I decided it might be a mink.


I did hear two owls calling to each other--I think they were barred owls saying, "We have a nest here, no other owls allowed in our territory!"

Unless they were chasing me out too, as the mockingbird coupled did again today on my way out.

From the Brown Family Environmental Center's north side, I then drove to the south side to check for the horned owls nesting in a pine plantation.  March lived up to its moon's name, "Mud Moon," as I kept slipping on the muddy and icy parts of the trail, finally falling once, without harm.

I didn't see any owls but enjoyed the magic, if a bit intimidating, pine forest lair.  I also got to see a rabbit running toward me and many birds.

When it was all over, the birds I could identify were, besides the barred owls:  red-winged blackbirds, three song sparrows, a mourning dove, bluebirds, and crows.

Speaking of birds, I'm encouraged by a birdwatcher's e-mail about his hearing the "peenting" call of a woodcock near a school in Dublin, Ohio, about 50 miles to the south of the Brown Center.  That call is the prelude to woodcock's mating "Sky Dance."

Two Really Big Shows in March in Ohio

Illustration of woodcock's "Sky Dance" from Aldo Leopold's "Sand County Almanac".

Soon, I hope to visit this vernal pool often, hoping to see migrations of spotted salamanders and other amphibians to the pool from their hibernation areas underground.  They like to lay their eggs in these temporary pools because there aren't fish in them.  This pool is a depression near the Kokosing River that collects snowmelt runoff, helping to prevent flooding of the Kokosing.  (Photographed April 6, 2013, after the migration

After about 45 years, I still remember certain passages from Aldo Leopold's "Sand County Almanac".  One of them is his description of the "Sky Dance" of male woodcocks during mating season, which is April in his native Wisconsin and March in Ohio.

So I was excited to find out last spring that there are woodcocks at the Brown Family Environmental Center at Kenyon College.  I had never seen a woodcock and still haven't, because I forgot they dance in March.  This year I'm remembering.

March also brings the spring migration of spotted salamanders and frogs and other amphibians from their underground hibernation spots to the nearest vernal pool.  I heard this occurs when the first rains of spring falls on a warm morning.   I knew the vernal pond it occurred at on the U.S. Department of Agriculture farm in Maryland where I used to work, and I know a vernal pool at the Brown Center,  but I've never seen that event either, in either state.

I remembered last spring in Ohio but I didn't know that  "warm" can mean about 40 degrees, I thought it meant about 50 degrees.  And I didn't know it might happen in the evening rather than at daybreak.

So I dream of walking through the Brown Center every evening or morning in March.   I know I'll at least make it once a week, starting with March 1 when the Center has its monthly Family Adventure Day, which I always attend anyway!