I am back in North Carolina for the warm months and
preparing to start construction on my mountain house. While clearing the house
pad of trailers, tools, and trash over the last few days, I have run across
some cool critters. Scrap boards were set on the ground next to the portable
sawmill so Uncle Ralph and I could mill logs without slipping in the mud. These
had to be moved. I knew from previous experience that untreated wood set an
inch or two in the ground was good resting/hiding habitat for the northern red
salamander (Pseudotriton ruber ruber),
so I kept an eye out for them. Sure enough, a 6-7 inch long specimen had
burrowed under a grounded board, so I snagged it and this is the best pic of
the lot:
After wrestling with an unsatisfactory photo setup with
the last red salamander I caught here, I had been giving some thought to
upgrading my salamander photo setup. But, having done nothing so far but
cogitate, this new Sally required immediate construction. First, I drilled
small holes in the bottom of a $2 plastic salad bowl and then lined it with a
mat of sphagnum moss scalped from a rotting log:
Placing it in the bowl amongst the moss, new Sally
settled right down and let me take a dozen or so pics. The previous Sally squirmed
around throughout its photoshoot, but that was probably because the bowl was
bare glass and Sally had no place to hide. Perhaps Sally feels more secure in
its native element of leaves and moss. Whatever, this time was different. After
the photography was completed, I placed the bowl in the ground within an old
stump hole in the heavily shaded forest:
And then camouflaged the blue plastic with detritus:
The plan is to leave the bowl in the ground where it will
incubate in a natural Appalachian forest environment. Hopefully, the sphagnum
moss will live and grow in the bowl well enough to look like a moss-covered hollowed-out
stump and be good for small-animal photography.
