Vernal pool research weekend: Year 2

The girls and I were doing some more field research for the UMaine vernal pool research project this past weekend. Last year during our late-April research outings, we found frog and salamander egg masses at the vernal pools we visited. This year spring came early and when we went out this weekend (the same weekend as last year), we found fairy shrimp, a vernal pool indicator species that doesn't usually make an appearance until May.

So although not great for the research project overall (we should have anticipated we'd need to be out earlier in the month to count egg masses), finding fairy shrimp was great fun for us since we didn't find any last year.

And to prove the point that we're new to this type of scientific research and identification, we initially thought that these creatures were fairy shrimp.

But when we saw the real thing...

Fairy shrimp are the larger orange-ish creatures.



... we realized that those smaller black creatures were something else.

After a bit of research at home with some help from the UMaine vernal pool research website, we discovered that the thousands of little black invertebrates we found were actually mosquito larvae.

From UMaine's vernal pool website

Based on the thousands we saw in several different pools we visited, we're in for a biting good time this summer.

We did find a bit of frog activity evidence with tiny little tadpoles we're hoping (but will have to let the UMaine folks verify for certain) are the wood frogs (vernal indicator species) we had originally set out to find. They were in the same pools we found fairy shrimp in so it's a hopeful (somewhat educated) guess. We're also thinking that the egg masses may have just recently hatched given how small they were.

The small round creatures are tadpoles, the longer thin ones are mosquito larvae.

Like last year, we were mucking around in the water and trekking through mud and were reminded again that in-the-field research is not for the faint-of-nature heart.

And even though bug spray was part of our research gear, we still had to put our jacket hoods up a couple of times because the black flies were out in such force Saturday morning.

And poor G., our team's research photographer, had a hard time getting video of the area because the flying insects kept getting in her way.



But there were a lot of other very interesting discoveries during our research that did not necessarily have to do with vernal pool identification but were exciting finds none the less.

Lots 'o deer tracks seen through the wetlands (not vernal we don't think) at one location.

Raccoon tracks

The mama duck actually scared the bejesus out of us when she took flight less than three feet from us. L. was quite indignant when we found this nest afterward, "What kind of mama duck is she leaving her eggs like that!"

Fiddleheads

Like a lot of scientific research, we found a little of what we hoped to and a lot more that we hadn't anticipated, but were happy to have made all the varied discoveries.