Baby Salamander Hunt, Part 1

We have baby salamanders!! A small group of tired and bug-bitten, but determined salamander hunters went out this afternoon to search around a few ephemeral pools for baby salamanders. We found 10 salamanders in 1 hour in a small area recently cleared of buckthorn. That was a total surprise in itself! All of them were very small, but none had yellow spots. While we scratched our heads about that, we also found a crude way of measuring their length - the best way, it seems, other than color to determine their age. In typical Cecil style, I forgot my ruler, so we laid them out on notebook paper, put a pen down for comparison, then I worked out their approximate measurements at home.

Itty bitty baby salamander. Approximately 30 mm. Found 8/16/15.

The range of snout-to-vent lengths was approximately 27 to 35 mm, with a mean of 31.1 mm. Vogt said in his book that the snout-to-vent length of juvenile salamanders that just emerged from the ephemeral pool ranged from 24 to 38 mm. So to me, it seems these are definitely baby salamanders. That also means that blue-spotted salamanders at Somme Woods are procreating, even in some of the buckthorniest places!

My biggest questions right now are: What's up with the yellow spots? Did we just miss the two-week window to see them? Why didn't the tiny salamanders I found in June have yellow spots? Are blue-spotted salamanders all over Somme Woods reproducing successfully, or did we just get lucky and find a big patch of juvenile salamanders?

More to come in Baby Salamander Hunt, part 2...

Cecil inspects a baby salamander for yellow spots. Photo Credit: Lisa Youngberg

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To find out more about the contents of this article or how to become a habitat restoration superhero, contact Cecil Hynds-Riddle at cecilhyndsriddle@gmail.com.