February 3, 2021 - North side

February 3, 2021 (Wednesday), 9:00am - 11:45am
Coverage: Jones parking lot to second stop sign

273 dead newts, 6 of which may be juveniles, 2 live newts humping (I took a video, Merav might have photos for an observation)

Other roadkill: one millipede, one rodent

Weather: Chilly, low 50s, mostly sunny, got a little rain Monday/Tuesday

Traffic: 36 cars; 6 bikes; 8 quarry trucks; 4 pedestrians

Well that was depressing.

But it was nice to start off with Merav, who checked the experiment flags while I logged new newts. Doing that with two people is a good thing, so you can each concentrate on one aspect.

And it was some solace to see two newts humping in the little ephemeral pool near Limekiln trail. Who knows if there will be water in there long enough to raise young, but at least they got to mate before being squished by cars, which seems like a better survival choice, given how many others didn't make it in the rush after the last rain. It was also interesting to see how different the male looked, with very smooth skin (and significantly larger, the female looked on the younger side). At first I thought they might be different species, Merav said she didn't think so, and California Herps informed me that breeding males do get like that, so I learned something.

One hiker said hi, asked if I was with the newt survey, thanked us for doing it.

I'm trying a different camera app, which thankfully does a significantly better job with geotagging, but the tradeoff seems to be lower-quality photos (which I'm kinda surprised at, I've taken some good ones with OpenCamera in the past.) Hopefully they're ok for this purpose, if not let me know.

Posted on February 4, 2021 06:05 AM by newtpatrol