Herp Update: Fundraising, herp activity, migration coming – March 24, 2021

Fundraiser

Herpers, we have reached our fundraising goal for the year!  Thanks for your help.  We will shut down the GoFundMe site early next week, but you are always able to make a donation directly by check or through PayPal and we will put it to good use.

Spring Herp Activity

We have now seen many Painted Turtles basking near their overwintering locations here in the Lake Champlain Basin. A unique but sad report came from New Haven, where a beaver dam failed in January and at least 60 Painted Turtles died when the water drained out of their overwintering location. They appear to have either frozen or dehydrated when the water drained out from under the ice.  We found six that survived in the small stream that remained in the center.

John J reported the first calling Spring Peeper from Calais.  We have a second hand report and recording of Wood Frogs calling in Jericho, but I have not heard either of these two species yet.

Not only have we had additional Common Gartersnake reports, Karen B from Benson reported our first Eastern Ribbonsnake report of the year.  Eastern Ribbonsnake is a rare S2 species and Karen is the only landowner from whom we receive regular annual reports of this beautiful gartersnake look-alike.  For a southern snake at the northern extreme of its range, it emerges from dens amazingly early.

Upcoming Amphibian Migration

The weather forecast for both Friday night and Sunday night both still look very good for amphibian migration here in the Lake Champlain Basin and perhaps elsewhere if you have lost most of your snow.

Video of VT Turtle Presentation

A video of a VT Turtle presentation that I gave last week for Green Mountain Audubon Society is now available for viewing on both their website and our YouTube channel at https://youtu.be/5CXVgHudXLs. Or just stream it below:

Jim