The Ephemerals

 Ah, spring...

Trees are leafing out...

 

Ferns are unfurling...

 Spring ephemerals are blooming...

I took two walks in the woods today, the first one with the purpose of taking pictures of salamander eggs. The forecast for thunderstorms around noon did not materialize, and since the small pond now looks like this:

... I can get close to the salamander egg masses that are there. There are a lot more than I realized. Some of them are under all that dried vegetation. Some are visible in the muddy places in between. There is still a little water in that middle section, but we are going to have to get some rain soon for the salamanders to have a chance.

I took that picture yesterday, and these are the ones I took today:

I may have only noticed them a few days ago, but these have obviously been there for weeks; these babies look like they are almost ready to hatch.

Still, even if they hatch before the pond completely dries up, they still need to live in the water for a couple of months before they are ready to be on dry land. So... we need rain. A nice, regular rain, about an inch per week for the next two months or so. After being deluged since December, is that really so much to ask?

 

Here's a video of the larvae:

As I've mentioned before, the green haze in their egg sacs in algae that grows in there, which they eat until they hatch. I don't know what they eat after they hatch; whether it's more algae, of which there is an abundance in the small pond, or mosquito larvae, which I think are probably still in the pond (the pond was full of them about a month ago), or other salamander larvae? Aquatic insects? Copepods? When there was water in the pond, it was teeming with life. It also had quite a few frogs in it, so that's another danger for the salamanders once they have hatched. And there was another danger nearby, which I'll show you later...

I didn't have time for a full walk when I went out with my camera, and only intended to take pictures of the salamander eggs in the small pond and go back to the house, but it was such a gorgeous day that I figured I might as well walk over to the stream and see how life was flourishing there. I have not had many chances lately to walk in the woods during a sunny, warm afternoon–we haven't had a lot of sunny afternoons in the last few months, and certainly not warm ones. So, the woods lured me on...

 What I found was fascinating, something I have never witnessed before. Backyard Bug of the Day:

Mayfly. Now, I have seen mayflies before, obviously. I have even seen them swarming over the stream. But the ones I saw today were laying eggs! It wasn't a big swarm, there were just a few, but they were flying in a sort of bobbing up and down way above the stream, and I noticed they all had something stuck on them... 

I realized it was eggs!

They would drop down to the water and deposit the eggs.

Eggs

Of course, mayflies are famous for living very short lives as adults–depending on species and sex it can be as little as a few minutes. After laying their eggs, that will be it for these females. 

I think that is an exuvia (discarded exoskeleton) from one of these newly emerged adult mayflies.

 As you can imagine, this is not an easy thing to photograph...

 I just read that mayflies belong to the order Ephemeroptera. So much of springtime is ephemeral. It gives me joy to see these things during their brief, lovely moments.

Now... here are too many pictures of frogs:

 

Here I was trying to photograph a swarm of tiny insects flying above the water...

... and didn't even notice that I took a picture of a frog, too! It's a better picture of the frog than the insects, too!

This is the same frog as the picture just above... after I scared it into jumping in the water. Sorry, frog!

I saw a lot of bugs on my walk with my camera, but most of them were not photographable. They were mostly flying things, a lot of them flying low over the leaf litter. But I spotted this in the stream:

This is a ground beetle, not a water beetle. I have no idea what it was doing in the water...

Or rather, on the water. It wasn't swimming, it was walking on the water. I wasn't sure if it needed a rescue or not, but it seemed to know what it was doing, and it was a bit out of my reach, so I left it to its own devices.

Bumblebee bumbling along above the leaf litter

I think this is a soldier beetle, on wood anemone.

I didn't bring my camera on my second walk, and of course there were a lot more easily photographable bugs...

Beetle and bee on dandelion

Pair of craneflies

And in the large pond (which I didn't visit on my first walk), lots more frogs!

It's hard to tell, but these salamander eggs look like at least some of them have hatched!

And, the large pond is full of tadpoles:

Is that everything? Yes, I think so, except for...

Arachnid Appreciation:

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As for the other danger to the salamander hatchlings... Backyard Reptile of the Day:

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I looked up from taking my close-up pictures of the salamander eggs to see this on the dried mound of vegetation in what's left of the pond. I don't know if it was there all along, and I just didn't notice, or if it emerged from somewhere while I was taking pictures.

Garter snake.

It didn't appear bothered by my presence, and seemed to be on the hunt...