Ekk need help with ID (taricha)

Hi everyone!

was out herping in the santa cruz county and happened to find a vernal ditch filled with some kind of spring peepers (frogs) and wile i was laying in wait to id the noisemakers, i noticed a newt swimming in the ditch! and with more investigation i found SEVERAL of them. including a nice embracing pair.
They were defiantly a taricha, dark brown bodies orange/ yellow underbellies long tails, think stocky hind legs...the works

now i know how to tell the difference between granulosa and tarosa but the ditch was murky AND i didn't want to disturb them by grabbing one for inspection of the eye color and protrusion. what i DO have is two different types of egg masses noted in the stream. complications arise obviously from the unidentified frogs. but i think its safe to assume with the two egg masses that ONE is the frogs and the other is the newts.

anyway, one mass was quite dense with many small eggs all clumped together, the other was less dense, with individual eggs visible, more spread out, and substantially larger.

several posts have alluded to egg laying as a definitive way to tell the species apart... but so far I havn't been able to find out what the difference is. any help is appreciated.

also, since this is overlapping territory, i suppose i should be open to the idea of both?

Hi,

to the egg masses: T.torosa has dense egg masses with hard to see individual eggs.
See: http://www.californiaherps.com/salamanders/images/tttorosaeggscu05.jpg

The other egg mass will probably be from the frog. Maybe Hyla regilla?

Do you have pictures?

Best Regards

Uwe

Thanks!

It is so neat to see them in their natural habitat , and for a suburb girl like me, a rare occurrence.

I have Pics of the adults on my Boyfriends Iphone,will try to load them tonight.

I agree with Uwe's id, sound like Pacific Tree Frog egg masses to me.