Peeper Party!

Seventeen Nature Strollers held a party in honor of the spring peepers that have been making the auditory landscape so beautiful lately. The diminutive frogs' chorus rose and fell around us as we searched the ponds of Goose Pond Mountain State Park for signs of awakening. One of the best things about revisting the same place throughout the seasons is learning about the seasonal round, the orderly appearance of species according to their own seasonal calendars. At Goose Pond Mountain, the skunk cabbage are followed by the spring peeper and red-winged blackbird. Wood frogs soon awaken and move to the buttonbush swamp, water spiders, aquatic beetles and backswimmers become active.

A sharp-eyed Nature Stroller distinguished these extremely tiny wooley alder aphids

from the white spots on the bark of the speckled alder. This is our earliest sighting

these fascinating creatures.

Uh oh, the praying mantis egg case we have been keeping tabs on has been visited

by a downy woodpecker or chickadee. If you look carefully you can see that a

portion close to the branch has been pecked away.

What's in that pink bucket?



Another sign of spring! Eastern red-spotted newts on the prowl.



There he is! There he is!
A calling woodfrog is pointed out. Man! These guys are hard to see
against the leaf-litter strewn bottom of Buttonbush Swamp.

And the result of all this calling? Glistening masses of wood frog
eggs that hold the promise of a new generation.