Most weeks, this blog covers relatively easy-to-see species. This week, we’re making an exception, for a happy reason: this past week, a team of volunteers documented four-toed salamanders crossing a road in Thetford. This species is rare in Vermont and New Hampshire, and almost never found in the Upper Valley. Ginger Wallis and Lori Fortini kindly allowed Lucy Tillinghast and Elise Tillinghast to tag along with them on a second night at this location, where the team was excited to see – and help across a road – a total of 17 four-toeds, as well as more common amphibians that were making their annual night-time journey from higher ground to a wetlands. The group was part of a bigger amphibian monitoring and road crossing effort initiated by The Amphibian Road Crossing Project and, later, Hartford Salamander Team, which this year included teams in Thetford.
Four-toed salamanders are easy to overlook. For starters, they’re small – approximately 2-4 inches long – and viewed from above, they have mottled brown-and-orange skin that makes them difficult to notice even in the stark setting of a road under a flashlight’s glare. Their undersides, however, are white with black spots, as shown in the second photo.
As noted in this Outside Story article by conservation biologist Steve Faccio from the Vermont Center for Ecostudies, four-toed salamanders breed in autumn, and this time of year, the females migrate to wetlands to lay eggs, typically in sphagnum moss. As Faccio notes, the female, “then guards the eggs for several weeks. Upon hatching, the larvae drop into the water where they develop until metamorphosis.”
Other special traits of these salamanders include constrictions at the base of their tails, which enable the salamander to preemptively disconnect its tail when a predator attacks (see Faccio’s article for more details on this); a range limitation to relatively low altitude habitats, as compared to other northeastern salamanders; and, of course, those funky four-toed hind feet (other terrestrial salamanders have five toes on their hind feet). For a species profile, and a map that shows what an exciting find this is, check out the Vermont Herp Atlas.
Also on the move this past weekend: big and beautiful spotted salamanders, eastern red-backed salamanders, wood frogs, and spring peepers. If you’re out near wetlands at night, you’re likely to hear thousands of these two early breeding frog species – the peepers peeping, and wood frogs quacking (also often described as chuckling or clucking). So enjoy the evening sound – and if you’re driving near a wetlands on a rainy April night, please go slowly, and do your best not to squash any slimy jay walkers and hoppers.
What have you noticed in the woods this week? Submit a recent photo for possible inclusion in our monthly online Reader Photo Gallery.