My little slice of vernal heaven

Hey everyone, I just wanted to share my local salamander spot with you guys. The place is pretty big, I can't even get to most of it, and I guess it's not technically a vernal pool, as it has quite a lot of water in it year round. I've caught loads and loads of tadpoles. I really need to learn how to identify those I've also found tons of Ambystoma laterale surrounding the pool, and also their larvae in the pool itself. I was really excited to catch my first Notophthalmus viridescens today! It was a larvae about 2 in long. It had the adult coloration with just the slightest slightest tinge of red to it. Is it possible it was neotenic? The place is basically fishless, although there is some kind of minnow species in there, they're about 3/4 of an inch long that live in schools.


Here's some bad phone pics

Notophthalmus viridescens larvae:


A small section of the pond :


a bunch of trash here. People make me so mad. I pulled this out of the water:



I think this weekend I might go out and do some trash cleaning. I love having this little spot . So much life in such an urban area. The place is literally surrounded by apartment buildings.

Thanks for looking!

Thanks for sharing, Jess. You're lucky to have such a lovely pond near you. I'm jealous! The trash may be unsightly, but at least it's not dangerous to the wild life (for the most part) like, say, chemical/agricultural run-off. If you do go to clean it, my hat is off to you!

I am also jealous. Living in the southern Cali concrete jungle is definitely hard on a herper.

What a gorgeous place! Thanks for having a stewardship attitude towards it too!

sweet! I had several "secret" spots like that as a kid. I used to float face down in the water on my inflatable rubber raft with my snorkel mask on so I could watch the newt-doings under water

It's funny how few people really appreciate these spots for what they are. It's a whole strange world full of alien life right there in front of them, but most people can't even be bothered to stoop for a closer look. Then they watch National Geographics on TV and say things like, "too bad we don't have all that around here"....That always made me sad....

Awesome looking place! Looks a lot like some of my herp spots.Thats a nice looking Eastern Newt, next time take a decent camera with you. Amazing what you can find a long with trash. It does anger me when I find evidence of people being disrespectful to nature.

Great place! I wonder what goes on there at night... I would go back with a good flashlight (or 2).
I see you found a redneck grill! Wow
Thanks for sharing your story and pics.

I have a place like that to. Love doing the snorkel thing. It is a small pond that is stocked withe Rough skinned newts of all genders and sizes. Surprisingly it is very healthy and so are all the newts and salamanders. I go there and have little breeding newts swimming around my legs and i'll net the non-breeding ones and tank pics of them. How come the pretty ones are always so deadly?

P.S. The newt in that one pic is not missing an arm.

Thanks for the kind words everyone. It really is a great place. I wish I could get deeper out into it, but there's probably like 10ft of dead leaves and gunk on the bottom. I am considering bringing a canoe out there, as the pond is at least a couple acres long and I would love to be able to explore it more. Jaymes, my camera decided to die about a week ago, I wish I had it with me that day though.