Near the bottom of winter, dawn comes late and low.
But where the sun’s elevation daily increases, open water wanes inconstant:
Some waterfowl, like the mute swans that now overwinter here, favor the pond so long as there beckons even a wing’s-breadth of open water, retreating to the rarely glassed-in river only when no lacustrine option remains.
–Though they still seem to prefer resting afoot over afloat, even adrift on a thinning island, perhaps to reduce heat loss or avoid attack from beneath. Others depart or pass over the 88-acre rink, like these geese headed toward Phoenix:
The life of a persistent (or over-optimistic, or flight-lame) wader with narrowed grazing options may be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short, and with fisher, weasel and hawk just as hungry, potentially beset with fear and danger of violent death withal.
Good hunting then, tall walker, and may you evade the pursuits of others.
Tranquil
in day that defines
at home with growth and form
Weightless
in night that re-knits
sojourning silent mists and stars
darkness scintillant
So
as ground shifts and seasons slide
may you with ease
find sense and sound footing where little appears
inspire in moist color to commune with deeper flows
dance delighted with moving spirits of other spheres
tease the onefold from artificed complexities
know open hand, comforting eye, place of natural belonging
hold and be held by all-that-is
Now
forever
until all awaken!
With best wishes and cautious hopes for a new year and a new reality…
“Si da el cántaro en la piedra o la piedra en el cántaro, mal para el cántaro.” – Sancho Panza
Windows open; no-one home
Farrar Pond and its environs teem with ghosts: Nipmuc, Massachusett and Pawtucket indigenes displaced by settlers or eradicated by imported disease and alcohol, native wolves and turkeys long extinct, departed forests of elm and chestnut, mile-deep ice and perhaps woolly mammoth. More recently, trees well-rooted along Halfway Brook, cut before damming to make an open pond and still showing at low water—or even high, when used as foundations for muskrat push-ups:
On top of all this pre/history are new-minted shades, most in the natural way of life (and death); too many more due to human intervention, deliberate or incidental.
In the latter category, well behind habitat loss and feral cats but more visible than either, are the lethal effects of acres of suburban glass. We draw our favorite avians from high and far
—sometimes very—
to decorate our close yards,
Study in grey and brown
luring them in with food
or (here the illusion of) potable/bathable water:
A few species tire themselves out attacking their own reflections. More see an open cave where a cave is not, or (depending on interior and exterior lighting, pane reflectivity and other cues) a clear passage. Most impacts are simple knock-outs, from which recovery is variably rapid if victims do not first freeze
or make a meal for some raptor or earthbound carnivore:
The mourning dove is not only a devoted family bird, but good on the wing as well as the nest: “their flight is fast and bullet straight.” (Cornell, which also reports it to be “the most frequently hunted species in North America.”) Unlike the peppered moth beloved of biology teachers, or the rather more endangered elephant, it has apparently not yet adapted to this new threat. When the bullet is intercepted by a window,
it is not good for the bullet:
Nor is this the only such encounter, even at this one spot, even recently:
Perhaps a remorseful resident might be allowed the sentimental wish, in this season of respecting the departed, that—as with the Pharaohs of old—whatever plane these spirits have ascended is abundantly provisioned:
There would I find a settled rest (While others go and come) No more a Stranger or a Guest, But like a Child at Home.
Consistently outstanding autumn color in almost any year is delivered by maples of several species. Virginia creeper is as pretty and widespread, but in its entanglements, not usually so well displayed:
Parthenocissus quinquefolia
And the reds of poison ivy, Toxicodendron/Rhusradicans, are even more intensely saturated, due to shiny waterproofing—but tend not to be available for such large displays due to certain intolerant bipeds and their broad–spectrum herbicides. Native is often best; in fact, the prolonged retention of pallid yellow leaves is an easy way to mark invasive Norway maples, (and glossy buckthorn) at considerable distance.
In a year as ferociously dry as this has been, many examples of the Acer genus not growing in swamps suffer early leaf-drop before the full rainbow sequence has a chance to play out. Fortunately, there are exceptions even in the highlands:
In cool shade, by contrast, the presentation is largely unabated:
Rhododendron carolinianum (?)
And sometimes stress brings out the best…
Where not blasted completely, several of our common oaks can deliver a fair show, more so against a backdrop of green conifer and blue water
or an angry grey sky, especially given the spectral sharpening of a low sunset:
And on the topics of rainbow sequences, spectral sharpening and angry skies, a sub-horizon morning sun here squeezes its Rayleigh-filtered rays high onto an abandoned oriole nest
while a half-mile north, the same lantern elicits from a passing squall just one near-vertical leg of a chromatically attenuated arc:
A few days of drizzle refresh the late wildflowers, helping them and their partners
to slake various hungers
and prepare for winter. But absent a hurricane to follow, these meager inches will not soon reach the deeper roots, leaving many woody plants vulnerable to winter’s desiccation. Indeed, much of the current fall will be sponged by tinder-dry duff and humus, neither restoring top- and subsoil nor running down and away to recharge stream, lake and aquifer.
Only recently within the “extreme” zone (and perhaps serving less lawn-intensive consumers), the mighty Quabbin—here from the Goodnough Dike, northward to a hazy Monadnock—
“is currently at 82.5% of its 412 billion-gallon maximum capacity” and within normal operating parameters. Closer to home, the Hobbs Brook basin is more deeply compromised, with consequences for both its late denizens and those of Cambridge:
Here a pair of juvenile double-crested cormorants idles in sluggish mud, disdaining for the moment a deceased koi,
while a great egret (thanks to Gwyn Loud for identifications) spends ten neck-twisting minutes
choking (owing to size or condition?) down some other finned morsel—probably another koi, as few native fish could tolerate this warm mudbath:
Closer still Flint’s (AKA Sandy) Pond, Lincoln’s primary public water supply,
is likewise at uncomfortable and declining levels:
Per a previous post, the situation is alarming but not yet critical, even without considering the Town’s backup well. As this chart shows, the heat and drought of recent seasons have driven withdrawals well below resupply—but not yet to the severity of the mid-1960s. (–Though that was before the rampant spread of large and heavily irrigated lawns…)
Above chart and Sandy Pond photos courtesy of Greg Woods, Water Department superintendent. These and more photos, charts and analysis, plus additional historical, ecological, practical and personal perspective, are available in the recorded discussion “Brown is the New Green.”
In the eye of no storm,
Farrar Pond is likewise ailing. This makes even more vital the availability of alternative drink, larder and home, especially for creatures that are small, water-bound, or otherwise unable to remove themselves to the Sudbury River or another refuge.
“Refuge” means more than a volume of water. The unique importance of vernal pools to the continuity of numerous amphibians, insects and other life-forms lies not alone in wetness, but in isolation-through-transience. No permanent water means no fish or other predators that require its continuous presence. A river is, to one or another degree, connected to all other rivers, seas, and most lakes. Only a pond with no in- or outflow connection with such is likely to be free of that hazard for enough months each warm season that the regenerative cycles may complete.
This end, however, is easily achieved by artifice. Any depression with an impermeable liner—clay, concrete, fiberglass or rubber—becomes a pond given sufficient rain or hose-time. If much more than a foot deep, it will over-winter insect larvae, tadpoles, even (when they choose are or forced to remain) adult frogs and juvenile turtles. Best for ecology all around is a handy roof downspout, whose supply is more pure, free of chlorine and well-oxygenated:
And the uphill or down-twig instinct rapidly attracts guests (here to ad-hoc poles); whatever the aesthetic shortcomings of bare neoprene, a breeding frog is forgiving,
even (apparently) content:
Without the metabolic and waste-treatment burden of fish, oxygen requirements are normally satisfied by surface exchange, perhaps augmented by pads and filamentous algae
—though the latter is continuously nibbled from every surface but their own by snails of indeterminate origin:
Perhaps this painted turtle could take one aboard for a little hull de-fouling?
An extended hot spell or heavy winter ice-over can apparently leave the depths hypoxic enough to harm tadpoles, but that is not usual, and can be managed with a small aquarium pump. Also perhaps helpful, though mainly added for decoration and to attract hummingbirds, small solar fountains can exchange quite a bit of dissolved gas when most needed,
and with outflow chilled by evaporation, it may convect to where most needed.
So much leaf area on a tree or shrub could quickly send the whole volume skyward via transpiration. But plants here are either submerged or within the stagnant boundary layer, hence remove little water—less, perhaps, than a bare surface would lose to normal evaporation. Instead, it is wicking by plants and bricks that most rapidly depletes a full pond; once down to bare polymer, further reduction is very slow no matter the weather. And poikilothermous animals even seem to prefer the sun-warmed rubber to available rocks:
(The young is resident from last year’s hatching; the adult might be its mother, resting after laying before the trek home to the lake.)
Prime beneficiaries of a small pond include frogs, perched on (not very) high singly
or collectively
within tongue-lash of food (possibly including smaller cousins);
at rest in or beneath the ripples;
or between worlds:
This pool, rich in fresh and decaying vegetables, invertebrates and other comestibles, provides for tadpoles to finish their pre-terrestrial business:
Members of the other local amphibian family, Salamandridae, also need water in which to breed and ripen. Formerly common hereabouts—turning over almost any large rock or rotting log would reveal a red-back—they are getting ever scarcer due to habitat loss and possibly environmental toxicity, increasing ultraviolet exposure and/or the chytrid fungus. Fortunately for all concerned (except their prey), they thrive in shady woodland with heavy leaf cover, and will breed here:
That tiny-eyed juvenile might even be the offspring of this spectacular adult, rescued half-frozen six years ago from an outbuilding and released to a pond-side thicket:
Semi-aquatic reptiles also abound. Northern water snakes, variously accoutered, spend much time submerged, apparently consuming large numbers of tadpoles,
and also strike picturesque
(and perhaps strike-ready) poses while sunning:
Nominally terrestrial species, mainly garter and eastern ribbon snakes, stalk and sun around the pond’s rim,
but also spend hours cruising (and minutes beneath) the water’s surface:
In accord with allometric power laws, the smaller will always be the more numerous, in both kind and number. Of the largest semi-permanent residents—turtles, snakes, adult frogs—there might on average be a few each of just a few species. Of tadpoles, a half-dozen-plus species, with tens of thousands of hatchlings declining to a hundred or so juveniles and dozens of surviving adults. Under the pads, flatworms, roundworms, rotifers galore, and on down to trillions (at least) of bacteria, perhaps millions of separate species. Somewhere between are the arthropods, visible in almost every image here as living organism or abandoned husk, prey for many of the fauna, and also (especially as ferocious underwater nymphs or obligate aquatic insects) predators for some.
One of the main intended beneficiaries of this particular pool was the Odonata, dragon- and damselflies. The odd structures in the early image above are maple tripods, each topped with a red dogwood whip. Until living plants took on the role, these provided a perch for fliers, a ladder for pre-adults to climb, an anchor for masses of frog eggs.
On hot bright days, with hawks and occasional eagles spiraling thermals high above, dragonflies are always darting close over the pond, too fast to photograph except when they pause beside
or above the water,
or lower down as may suit, to sit
or lay:
Months or years later, naiad ecdysiasts climb any available mid-pond eminence
to shed, spread, dry and fly:
Other hunters, like this Dolomedes triton, skitter with similar speed and agility across the surface, though most often moving more subtlely or lurking in concealment:
And some come for more peaceful purposes,
including that final rest:
If all the world’s a stage, then these Puddle Players may be most entertaining in their dynamic engagements. Much of the violence happens out of sight: too quick, too dark, too deep for the human eye. And when visible, not easy to photograph. Exceptions are this inter-phylum battle, and this one between similar antagonists, the former a draw. More often, if presenting no direct threat or opportunity, the parties seem to ignore each other,
especially if scaled as mote and mountain,
with an occasional slapstick startlement:
Yet withal, and however temporary, moments of peace in a world of strife…
Same beaver dam as above, four years plus a very dry summer later. –More than one, in fact: as mentioned in this post, the current drought has accumulated for well (?) over a year, taxing the reserve capacity of even well-developed root systems. Old trees and shrubs are dying, and will be missed; likewise native wildflowers blighted before setting seed. The world will look different next spring. –As it does every spring.
The main surface feeders for Farrar Pond—Halfway Brook, above, and Beaver Brook, draining the St. Anne’s/Lindentree Farm area, are down to a trickle
when flowing at all. But this pond collects from a substantial area of swamp and wetland, and the banks rising high above most of its periphery release slow-migrating subsurface water in seeps and upwellings all about.
The weather spirits are capricious. As confirmed by both radar and rain gauge, numerous storms have blown through just north or south of Farrar Pond, in some cases flooding basements only a couple of miles away while leaving the ground here dusty-dry. As a particularly insulting example, this precipitous front rolled across the northeast in a 440-mile line from Fredericksburg to Lewiston,
with exactly one gap about 5% of that length that slid right over Nashawtuc.
With nothing to contain, and no urging from the sound of rushing water, the beavers have set aside structural maintenance of natural dams and circumvention of human contrivances
to focus on filling the larder for chilly times ahead:
For their sake, and so many others’, we may hope that stick lodges and mucky warrens remain safely submerged. Meanwhile, the slope between land and lair has become long and slippery for amphibious mammals:
With more weight on pointier feet, some who come to the edge are put off by the unpleasantness of muddy fur and the risk of La Brea-like entrapment, and make uncommonly close approach to human habitation to drink
before retiring
to a shady siesta.
In the well-drained uplands, exposed trees are not happy; the assault of heat, low humidity, wind and sun leads to shock desiccation, with no time to extract recyclable nutrients before loss of vasculature, foliage and branches:
Where rooting is not deep enough, the whole plant enters a different kind of recycling program. And in a banner year for caterpillars, weakened trees and shrubs become even more vulnerable:
Good news for some arthropods is bad for others. Deer ticks—killed or driven into the duff layer—are down. And the parched soil is easy to scratch up for parasite-killing dust baths,
A different tangle in the natural order, trees and shrubs that lost bud and bloom in the spring flash-freeze become too enthusiastic in their attempts to ensure propagation, like this magnolia flowering (but not setting seed) eight months early:
By comparison, swamp maples rooted close to the water table may—even if many weeks prematurely—at least enjoy an orderly transition:
And in in deeper shade, especially where heavy mulch (here a half-meter of oak chips) maintains coolth and moisture, some species thrive:
Sun or shade, even a sprinkle that brings no joy to thirsting plants may trigger other upwellings on rotting stump and root:
And yet, while these fungi and myxomycophytes may safely graze, even a symbiote with post-nuclear potential cannot always survive unrelenting heat and drought:
Animals are not only thirsty, but also hungry, right up the food chain. Where a relatively domestic red squirrel raids feeders,
its cousins instead strip unripe conifers a whole season ahead of usual:
Raccoons will always find a way
for themselves
and their families:
Hunger and thirst stress animals as much as plants; often more: estivation or temporary mud burial is an option for few. Where this squirrel seems contented and at home,
Oddly enough, it kept returning to the exact same spot on the pavement. Hoping for a quick quietus, perhaps, or seeking healing from some ancient energy vortex? By contrast, though clearly in considerable discomfort,
may—given the low probability of hypothermia, a few (currently superabundant) fat voles and enough to drink—
heal and live to salute our fields with tail aloft come winter.
All gotta eat, which for most eventually entails being eaten. Having hoovered up most of the local tadpoles and crickets, snakes that are equally comfortable dry
or wet
scare likewise amphibious frogs into any safe moist shade, like these potted ground covers, stored near a house in anticipation of reasonable plant-out weather:
Perhaps safer aloft, hummingbirds and bumblebees sip respectively from trumpetvine
Back down below, the temporarily declining wet area gives a preview of its ineluctable (barring a major dredging project) return to swamp, wetland, meadow, forest. Receding water reveals the persistent foundations of trees cleared when the pond was created: the shallowest, most often exposed, serving as nurse logs;
the deeper, as bistros for muskrats;
the deepest, largely untouched by time, as neat perches.
At the shallow end of the pool, each inch lost in depth adds a foot’s width to the mudflats,
opening what are usually water-bound hummocks
to all sorts of predators:
From each spring’s last melt-off, these little islands protect dozens of waterfowl nests from four-footed assault. Fortunately for the birds, this de-insulation occurred after most or all chicks had attained at least the ability to paddle,
while a rich stew of invertebrates sustains light-footed waders like a lone wandering sandpiper:
In those days, brush-fires were rampant, and one could stroll dry-shod across most of the Cambridge Reservoir without further divine (or infernal) intervention. Now, from Winter Street, it’s only halfway toward moonscape status:
But… It is not over, and reprieve (much less full relief, a couple of dozen inches’-worth) has yet to be forecast.
The severest drought on record in the Northeastern United States was during 1961-69. Water supplies and agriculture were affected because of the severity and long duration of the drought. Precipitation was less than average … beginning in 1962 in eastern Massachusetts. Streamflow had the greatest negative departure during … 1966 in the east. In 1965, the Massachusetts Water Resources Commission reported that emergency water supplies were being used by 23 communities. Water-supply emergencies were declared by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health for 37 communities, and 3 water districts invoked water-use restrictions. Voluntary water-use restrictions were adopted by about 30 communities. Ten communities had water supplies that were in a critical condition, that had less than 90 days of surface-water supply, or that required a decrease in ground-water pumpage.
–Ibid.
So while Lincoln and some surrounding towns are fortunate in water, we do not drink alone from (or spill gasoline, lawn chemicals, other toxins into) our ponds and creeks, visible and subterranean. So as good lateral and upstream neighbors to people, plants, animals, and all water-dependent life-forms (which is, so far as is known at present, all of them), we throttle back, allow lawns to brown into dormancy, “live simply, that others may simply live” (E. Seton?). And hope that we do not set any new records in the drought department.
Breathing in, I calm my body.
Breathing out, I smile.
Dwelling in the present moment
I know this is a wonderful moment.
–Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace
All that lives, on this planet, depends on oxygen to keep its metabolic fires alight. –All, that is, but the primordial and still vitally important orders for which it is toxic and which have, since the Great Oxygen Catastophe, therefore retreated to murky depths and anaerobic sludges. For the rest, ourselves and plants included, that element might be considered an enabler to organized life secondary only to carbon (most versatile of structural nodes) and water (universal solvent, general acid and base, thermal buffer, etc. etc.).
The air we need is made in the main by shallow-water algae and cyanobacteria, a minor third by land plants (from which, in turn, come most of the fuel we burn with it). Some sources stand between, with roots in the muck and crowns floating upon or stalking above the surface. The former include Nymphaea odorata;
the latter Nelumbo lutea
as well as escaped exotic cousins, all rich larders for valued pollinators and diverse other animalia, and a delight to multiple senses. This display of purity-from-defilement underlies representations of the Buddha on a lotus seat, and perhaps, by extension, the Sanskrit mantra Om mane padme hum.
Whether erect or afloat, the pads of either may collect splash or rain into a kind of pool-within-a-pool, a refuge large enough to host diverse mobile life-forms for a transitional visit
The lotus leaf, like Norton Juster’s Humbug, has the unusual property of being “superhydrophobic”—practically unwettable; with contact angle near 170º reducing adhered area below 1%, a droplet rolls around like a ball bearing,
Classical references to this “lotus effect” include
Who dedicates all actions to God without attachment
is unaffected by sin, as a lotus leaf by water.
– Bhagavad Gita Ch. 5, v.10
In the middle of this flooded field, one partially filled lotus pad stands out (if not up) not only for color and cleanliness, but also for the silvery shimmer of partial reflection at the water-air-leaf interface:
As with some other species residing at the water/air interface, the gas-exchanging stomata (“mouths”) of the lotus leaf lie atop rather than below. On a bright summer day, the otherwise-invisible exhalation is trapped by water’s high surface tension, in the main sliding laterally along a permanent air layer to where hydrostatic pressure lessens rather than forcing its way directly upward:
Closer inspection shows a bathtub-ring of pollen, dust and other debris left behind as the pool shrinks in hot sun; all this will be washed away when (if?) it rains again.
Same pad, in action:
Numerous and admirable are the flowers of land and water, herb and tree.
… I love only the lotus, which from filthy mud arises unstained
Laved by pure waters, yet not seductive
Freely open within; without erect, neither rambling nor branched
Distant, the fragrance more delicate
Slim, clean, upright
To be enjoyed from afar, not over-intimate …
Where are those who, like me, love the lotus?
Two planets meeting face to face,
One to the other cried “How sweet
If endlessly we might embrace,
And here for ever stay! how sweet
If Heaven a little might relent,
And leave our light in one light blent!”
But through that longing to dissolve
In one, the parting summons sounded.
Immutably the stars revolve,
By changeless orbits each is bounded;
Eternal union is a dream,
And severance the world’s law supreme.
–Muhammad Iqbal
Islands with shared roots
Overhead the albatross hangs motionless upon the air
And deep beneath the rolling waves in labyrinths of coral caves
The echo of a distant tide comes willowing across the sand
And everything is green and submarine
And no one showed us to the land
And no one knows the wheres or whys
But something stirs and something tries
And starts to climb towards the light
This sensuous tangle is not a strangler fig, nor yet any other alien monster:
~ ~ ~
Flying Squirrel Hollow, as sometime known, lies at the extreme southern point of Farrar Pond, indenting an edge of the glacial outwash plain forming the high ground to the south and west. A minor source of water inflow (nutrient runoff perhaps not so minor?), it may be located as waypoint 11 on the map here opposite the former Pickman stables. From above, in late spring, the connection looks about like this,
while winter draws back the canopy:
(Quadcopter photography courtesy of Dante and Daddy, who are creating beautiful and informative aerial video tours of Town conservation lands.)
Steep banks with superb percolation feed subsurface water year-round to almost two acres of rich, black bottomland, supporting a dense community of ferns, skunk cabbage and other shady wetland vegetation. On slopes and flats higher up, well-drained A and B horizons protect buried wood (like dead tree roots) from dry-rot. This allows upland snags to remain upright for the perching,
dining
and denning
pleasure of diverse birds, mammals and insects. This oak
was killed but not felled by an alarming lightning strike in the early 1990s; this 30-foot chestnut leader—despite the multiplying sail area of a Virginia creeper—
has stood at least a decade longer, roots yet viable and new growth productive in the phoenix-like way of its kind, as a testament to Castanea‘s desirability for fenceposts and other outdoor construction.
In the damp valley floor, though, death more briefly precedes destruction. Roots of many species may not “want” to penetrate deeply into waterlogged, anoxic muck, and may also have no need to reach far to satisfy nutritional requirements. Structural support against lateral wind loads is important, as blowdowns are a primary natural determinant of New England forest seniority. But the Hollow provides good shelter, as well as the collective windbreak of other trees. Comparing exposed roots from blowdowns in the valley and above, these sheltered trees often seem more delicately rooted. So when a deciduous tree here does die standing—from drowning, disease or other misadventure—it is likely to lose its footing in just a few years. This image, of the flatter part of the valley floor, illustrates the point:
Most trees stay attached to their root balls. (–Easier to see at ground level). The three large trunks at center right are from one very big white pine: the two with mossy growth fell decades ago, the third recently’ and the resinous stump still stands. And once down, when trunks are not propped out of the wet on side-branch stilts (as with that pine), rot is rapid.
Massachusetts does experience rare tornadoes (a minor one, or possibly a strong microburst, cleared an arable patch in the woods south of the dam half a century back), and the tail end of a hurricane might dump a lot of sideways rain from time to time. But the big winds here are the dread nor’easters, which augment high peak speeds—and strong gusts that dislodge roots and can induce extreme swaying oscillations—with heavy lateral snow loads. So it is not surprising that nearly all of these blowdowns point (yellow arrows) roughly to the southwest. A notable exception is indicated by the red arrow, which crosses the public footpath.
Probably made more vulnerable by entangled-root damage and soil dislocation when its west-pointing neighbor fell several years earlier, this tree—here at right, from direction of orange arrow—
had been struggling for a long time, and had probably lost much of its substructure by the time it fell. But given its previously symmetrical and balanced trunk and branching pattern, why in that direction?
Strong south winds are uncommon here. But there are dramatic exceptions, like the odd extratropical cyclone spinning up the Connecticut Valley. Soaked ground, violent east-side winds freighted with rain… An irresistible force against an inadequately braced object. That underside view, and this lateral one (green arrow),
show the limited reach of major roots. (For comparison, a quick stroll eastward along the pond-side trail shows, via footfall erosion, the length and strength of roots in more exposed locations.)
Also visible is a large vine, which probably had little to do with the tree’s death (unless its clinging opened a path for some pathogen), but was carried down with it. What kind of vine? Exposed masses of hairy rootlets, visible even in dull winter,
are already indicative. But vines are more adaptable than trees, so patience as usual reveals all, and further up the downed trunk—
further still—
and now eighty feet away, on drier ground, with less confusion from the background jungle of June,
we see the recrudescing former top of a healthy Toxicodendron radicans displaying its venomouly glossy moisture barrier as it feeds from the decaying oak. New life from old, and so repeats the cycle.
Permanent rather than vernal, but amphibians don’t know that. –Nor that, as a human artifact with no direct connection to any natural pool or stream, it is free of egg-devouring fish. (Tadpoles, snakes, salamanders, dragonfly nymphs and other predators… Well, it’s tough world, even submerged.)
Through the winter, melted and refrozen repeatedly, most years with the roof open often and long enough to sustain respiration by torpid residents, especially with a leaf net to reduce biological oxygen demand.
Frogs here typically migrate up from Farrar Pond on the first late-winter or early-spring night that meets three conditions: open water at the edges of source and destination, damp ground and a largely snow-free path between, and air temperature above about 40ºF. (Bright moon and rain are apparently helpful but not necessary.)
This was an exceptionally warm late winter and early spring—enough so to trick many trees and shrubs into early flowering, leading to destructions of a year’s bloom and seed when late frosts snickered at hopeful gardeners. This spring, there was also a shortage of rain at the appropriate time. So even with water and ground clear, travel was apparently too parching for skin-breathers until a week or so later than normal. By March 17th, however, wood frogs were noisily engaged and married, then in the still consummation of amplexus both afloat as usual
and (less commonly) ashore nearby:
Both techniques proved productive, quickly delivering a considerable number of embryonic offspring:
Afternoon of the 18th brought a gloomy front,
and then sharp cold. By the morning of the 20th, the top inch or so of each high-laid egg mass was frozen solid
while parents rested safely beneath the blurry crust:
The next day it warmed and snowed—insult to injury, where earlier snow or heavy rain might have left the precious deposits safely insulated.
The mushy thawed eggs provided welcome early food for a hundred or so over-wintering bullfrog tadpoles, and probably other creatures as well. But half a myriad is still thousands, and when warmth returned, hatching seemed to occur all the more quickly, carrying forward the next cycle of life:
