Chicago Nature Blog: Newts

With the Summer II semester comes a work-school-sleep-work-school-sleep schedule, but somehow I've got to find time to do my studying as well as my internship duties. When I'm lucky, I get a few hours to just kind of let go a little and find things to do to take my mind off of everything that's crazy. Like today. Inspired by some photographers on Flickr who had photographed some local reptiles and amphibians, I set off for a new destination, further away from the city in hopes of finding some less disturbed natural areas in which I might come across something different from the usual Chicago fare. Out in the burbs, I stopped by a familiar location I have known for years for its good fishing, but now armed with my camera I was destined to find something new here. I found a path through some old growth woods and followed it for quite a distance, occasionally flipping bark at the prospect of finding a tough garter or Dekay's. The heat wave we're experiencing is still steady but at least it rained pretty good the other day. Still, the woods and prairie were dry and I came to the conclusion that anything there has holed up until better times. However, I walked until I saw an opening in the woods some distance away, off the path. Hoping it was a pond or wetland, I headed toward the light until I smelled the characteristic aroma of swamp. The opening in fact turned out to be a sizable swamp in a clearing in the woods. Most of the surface was thick mud, and 90% of the water surface was covered in green algae. Big dead trees poked out every which way, and as I approached the swamp, I heard a chattering of alarmed frogs. As I stepped out over the swamp on a log, a group of at least fifty young frogs darted every which way, yelping and chirping as they did so. It was so funny that I had to laugh. They would stop and freeze, and all I had to do was turn the camera on to make the clicking noise, and they all hopped away in unison. I would tap my foot ever so lightly, and they would hop again. This happened for a few minutes until the majority of the young frogs made their way off the mud and algae and into the water. Since I am still using the stock lens I was unable to get any good shots of the frogs, but they ended up being bullfrogs anyway (I zoomed in on the photos to confirm they were bullfrogs on the computer when I got home). I then decided to walk around the pond and in the surrounding wetlands and made a few surprising finds along the way, including some really cool newts (Notophthalmus viridescens louisianensis) and some assorted arthropods. Here's some photos from the day.

The swamp (pronounced with a short "a", like in "stamp", like my ES professor).