Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy

For those interested in Amphibians this will be an exciting week!  I was just checking the weather and there’s a chance of rain Wednesday through Friday and the temps are supposed to be around 50 degrees!!  PERFECT!!

We still have room in our Amphibians Afoot Class and Field Trip so if anyone is interested please sign up soon. If it rains those nights we’ll definitely be doing a night excursion and perhaps a road crossing assist.

So what’s the big deal about the first spring rains in March? Man, if the typed word could only show my excitement! I’m about to jump out of my seat on this and can barely catch all my typos!

The first warm rain in March is when Wood Frogs, Spring Peepers, toads, Jefferson Salamanders and others make their move! Imagine them in their forest homes, under logs, in burrows, nestled in the cushion of fallen leaves….the winter slumber is over and it’s time to breed!  They can’t leave their havens without some rain because their skin will dry out and they can’t move during a daytime rain because predators are out. So they wait……then it happens! Nighttime falls, the rains come and they migrate in force! 

They’ll migrate from as far away as 1/4 mile to get to the vernal pools and other wetlands where they were born in order to meet up with their fellow species to mate, stay a few days and then return to the forest. Wow – it gives me goosebumps just thinking about it! Here’s an interview I did with Mike Hayslett when he was here with us last year: Spring Wetlands Interview

This special spring rain sets the season off and is also why we get our amphibian monitoring program going this time of year.  We have these big events and the amphibians are most visible from March through about June/July. Oh it is just so much fun!

So, watch the weather and if you’re out at night when it’s raining, watch the road – what you may think are leaves blowing across the road may actually be frogs, toads and salamanders trying to cross!  Let us know what you encounter!

And please do check out the Amphibians Afoot Class mentioned above – there’s a small fee for this one to help cover some of our costs but it’s well worth it!

I LOVE this time of year!  Our amphibians are waking up, tree sap starts to run, groundhogs start to stir, and birds are on the MOVE!  It’s so exciting! So alive!  and yet still the signs are subtle for now, and then in a few weeks, Whoooooosh – the full chorus of Spring is singing and all the dancers are on the stage! Oh how I love it!

Ok, so what inspired me to write this morning is that I just got the first email of the season about the Chimney Swifts and even though it will be few weeks before they get here, I love knowing that they’re on their way! They’re part of this amazing dance of life and hearing that they’re gosh, about half way here already sets my heart a flutter! While we were digging out from the snow, something in them sparked and said, it’s time to FLY! and off they went!

The whole migration “thing” simply amazes me – actually, nature in general just amazes me – it’s such an incredible and beautiful dance of life through time and space, like some complex waltz with partners handing off partners to other partners, a nod and curtsy here and there yet no instructions needed. Just beautiful.

So, back to the point, here’s the news: the first Chimney Swifts of the season have been sighted on the Gulf Coast returning from their wintering grounds in South America. As in past years Driftwood Wildlife Center will be plotting the swifts’ movements northward over the next few months. We won’t see them for a few more weeks but you can watch their movement as fellow naturalists south of us post their sightings at: WWW.CHIMNEYSWIFTS.ORG