Tuesday 1/26/2021, 9 am

@newtpatrol and I went there this morning to do the first walk, as part of the regular weekday survey.
We had about 23 newts on this 1 mile section (from St. Joseph's Hill parking lot to the boat club road). Most of the newts were pretty dry. It’s amazing how quickly they dry out - it rained just on Sunday. We marked each newt with a numbered flag. In a few places we had 2 newts together, and they got one flag, but we wrote a note on the flag. @newtpatrol watched as one of the newts got blown away in front of her when a truck drove by on her way back (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/68654375)! She aslo found two newts that weren't maked on the road - an additional one on Flag #10, and Flag #18.
Since this was the regular survey day for this week, all observations were added to the 2021 project, and also to this new project. None of the newts were removed.
All data was added to a new preadsheet.
Traffic data: 5 trucks, 10 cars, 1 bike, 3 pedestrians, 20 parked cars.
It was so cold (3c) that there was beautiful frost everywhere, including 1 dead newt.

Posted on January 26, 2021 10:48 PM by merav merav

Comments

One reason there might be so few newts is because of the overnight freezing weather. It might be why they are dehydrated to "crackers" too. One researcher remarked that newts don't migrate when the overnight temp drops below 40 degrees F. I'll see if I can find that reference.

Posted by truthseqr about 3 years ago

oh, too bad... All this for nothing?

Posted by merav about 3 years ago

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