A Walk with Pat at Garbry Big Woods Sanctuary...May 7, 2018...Part 2

Pat has sharp eyes, sharper than mine.  She was the reason we saw most of the following things during the walk.

"Doesn't that Trillium have four petals?"  she asked.  It did.  It had curiously different arrangement of sepals and leaves, also.

We walked on.

She found several small Crayfish Chimneys.  These chimneys are much daintier than the ones we find in the swamp at Brukner Nature Center.

She likes bright-colored fungi.  You will have to click on the photo and enlarge it to see the fungi she spotted.

Two more Fungi, a little easier to see.  They were beside the boardwalk.

A pollinator, a tiny Ladybug.  Below is a cropped photo.

Ta Da....

This is what Pat found that excited me the most.  As we walked, I told Pat about the few times Tom and I have seen adult male Five-lined skinks displaying their red throat patches for females on the boardwalk.  No, she didn't find a displaying adult.  Even I would have noticed him.  But  she found something neither Tom or I had ever seen....

This little fellow was about the size of a Red-backed Salamander which are common at Brukner.

He moved really fast.  This was the most in focus photo I got as he scurried off to find cover elsewhere.

When I got home, I searched on the Internet for Five-lined Skinks, wondering if this was a young one.  I knew as the adult males had red on their heads and this little fellow had a tinge of red around his face.  On the Internet I learned that Five-lined Skinks live from two to six years so an immature might be the size of a Red-backed Salamander.

I also learned that one way that Skinks vary from salamanders is that they have claws.  And because the critter was so slow and wary of leaving the crack in the log, the hind foot on it was in focus.

Looks to me like he has claws.  I'm going to say he is an immature Five-lined Skink.  So, so pleased with myself.  Hope no one pops my balloon!

Play Day at Brukner, Spotted Salamanders and Io Caterpillar

This is the reason I continue to volunteer a Brukner Nature Center.  It's fun for me and fun for those I teach.  I was teaching Reptiles and Amphibians.  We were on our way to Investigate a Rotting Log when we made a brief stop at the creek.

The girls in the middle of the photo are looking for the frog another of the students found the moment before.  I'm glad someone spotted the frog.  It was the only one we found on our excursion.

But that was all right.  The students were here for the third day in a row.  Earlier in the week they had seen frogs at the pond.  They had also found turtles so the reptile family had been seen.

They never did see a snake in the wild which is unusual since they had been in all the Brukner habitats during the three days they had been exploring,  I was glad showing  and letting them touch one of our Wild Life Ambassadors, a corn snake, was part of the Reptiles and Amphibians Session.

The soil and leaves under the rotting logs at the bottom of the hill where we normally look for amphibians and reptiles  were dry because we have had very little rain in September.

One of the Wildlife Educators employed by Brukner suggested I take the children to the floodplain instead.  Normally, this is too muddy to walk on.  But yesterday, the ground was only damp.

The students looked under logs in two areas and found living treasures in both areas.

The most exciting to find were the young Eastern Spotted Salamanders.  All were small, some smaller than others.

Earlier in the week, the students had spent a session learning about insects and insect relatives.  They found a variety of these in and around the logs.  This is one I had never seen before.

I took a photo of it which I showed to a Brukner intern when the group and I returned to the center.  She told me it was an Io moth caterpillar.

A great day.  I played and I learned something new.