Saturday afternoon found us wandering in the woods, peering into hollow trees, rolling fallen logs and prowling along the edges of pools, both permanent and temporary. My colleague from work, Scranton, was along. It is seldom that he and I have a day off together and Treebeard and I were pleased that he came by to visit and go exploring.
Scranton checking out the interior of a very nice beech tree. We usually find a squirrel or two in this tree - no one was home yesterday though.
Treebeard spotted this box turtle shell just off the trail. Strange, we were on this trail last Sunday and neither of us saw this bright bit of white then...
I found evidence that some critter -- most likely a raccoon -- had been dining well on crayfish. There were a number of claws and carapaces scattered about on the forest floor.
We rolled a number of logs and found a variety of little beings camped out beneath them. The eight-legged critter pictured above is a species of harvestman,
Vonones ornata. We also found a variety of beetles, beetle larvae, dormant grasshoppers, slugs and snails.
But, without a doubt, our favorite finds of the day were the salamanders we found. The 'mander pictured above is a marbled salamander,
Ambystoma opacum. It was just one of the twenty-one of this species that we found. We also found several Atlantic coast slimy salamanders,
Plethodon cholrobryonis, and an Eastern red-backed salamander,
Plethodon cinereus.
We made sure that each log we rolled was returned to its original position before we left. If you're gonna pull the roof off of something's house, it's only right to put it back the way you found it.
