Friday, August 16, 2013

Time For Bullfrogs To Hibernate

As temperatures begin to cool, that big ol’ bullfrog (Rana catesbeiana) in your neighborhood pond is thinking about retreating to the bottom of the pond to spend the winter. Bullfrogs in our area will disappear from the edges of ponds and lakes around mid-October, burrowing under the mud at the pond bottom, or under leaf litter.
The bullfrog is a common species and was originally found only in the central and eastern United States and up into Nova Scotia. Unfortunately, efforts to commercially harvest frogs’ legs from bullfrogs has led to the introduction of the species to many western states, as well as Mexico and Cuba. There is concern that introduced bullfrogs compete with and displace native frog species in these areas. And they’ll eat almost anything that happens their way: worms, large insects like dragonflies, other frogs, and even unsuspecting hummingbirds.


Not sure that what you’re seeing is a bullfrog? Bullfrogs prefer the water’s edge along a vegetated bank. When alarmed they may jump into the water or hide among the dense vegetation. Like green frogs, they are varying shades of green and brown and yellow, but green frogs have a pair of ridges that run down the back. The bullfrog does not have these ridges, though it does have a ridge of skin that runs from just behind the eye and wraps around the eardrum. Adult bullfrogs are large, with body lengths ranging from three inches to a whopping eight inches. The distinctive ‘jug-o-rum’ call of the male is quite different from the banjo-twang call given by the green frog.
Bullfrogs spend their lives around water. Unlike terrestrial wood frogs that have a frenzied breeding season in early spring in temporary water bodies, the bullfrog breeding season doesn’t need to be completed in a two to three week span. Instead, bullfrogs breed anywhere from May to July in our area and from February to October in the south. And since eggs are laid in permanent bodies of water, the tadpoles don’t need to race against the clock to develop into frogs before their pond dries up. In fact, bullfrog tadpoles can take up to two years to transform into frogs, with some spending a winter or two in the tadpole stage. Look for these huge five-inch long tadpoles along the silty bottom of their aquatic home.

Submitted by Cindi Kobak

Image: Wikipedia

The Atlantic Flyway

As birds continue their migration along the Atlantic Flyway from their northern breeding grounds to their wintering areas in the Caribbean, and Central and South America, Audubon Connecticut’s Director of Bird Conservation Patrick Comins reminds us about the value documenting where shorebirds gather to feed and rest.
It would be helpful to document migrant shorebird usage in the state. Many of our shorebirds continue to decline at disturbing levels and the better we understand stopover foraging areas, high tide roosts, and other habitats that may be essential for them in migration, the better we can protect the places that are important to them. There is a easy way you can help, simply eBird your sightings and share them with ctwaterbirds@gmail.com.
It is important to track big concentrations areas for any migrants, but of particular concern are Lesser Yellowlegs, Semipalmated Sandpiper, Buff-breasted Sandpiper, and of course the few Red Knots that find themselves on the habitat limited coast of Connecticut and any concentrations of migrant Piping Plovers.

Dunlin - Terry Shaw
This only covers the globally threatened and candidate species, but American Oystercatcher, Solitary Sandpiper, Upland Sandpiper, Whimbrel, both godwits, Purple Sandpiper, Dunlin and Short-billed Dowitcher are all considered “Birds of Conservation Concern” by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Please keep in mind that these birds are on a tight energy budget and are of serious conservation concern, so please take care to avoid flushing them in the course of counts, and thank you for your help!

(From the September 2013 newsletter)

Citizen Science: MonitorChange

On the ground impacts of Global Climate change, sea level rise, changes to our forests and landscapes, development, all can be measured with precise scientific instruments. But the money and time to do so is often just not there and thus major changes around us are happening but remain undocumented. However, a partial solution is at hand by simply taking pictures over time from the same location. Combine those pictures into a sequence and you directly and permanently document and demonstrate change,and these changes can then be quantified.
MonitorChange (monitorchange.org) a concept to crowdsource changes in the environments where we live, work, play, or care about, be they parks, our backyards, our rivers, or our city scape, using nothing more than camera phones. The new thing here is that multiple people with multiple cameras can take pictures which are then processed using existing software so that no matter what camera type or format the pictures were originally taken with they are transformed into uniform snapshots of the same scene with the same dimensions with all the objects in the pictures the same size and shape. This allows all the different pictures to be put into time lapse sequences that can be made into a video, a slide show, or used to measure change direct over days, years, or decades.

The concept uses little more than a camera phone and a stout piece of bent steel to start.
A piece of angled steel is firmly mounted to provide a consistent height, angle and direction from which to shoot images using nearly any camera. When collected together, photo-stitching software aligns and pieces together images to show changes over time.


This concept has lots of applications to the type of work that ecologists, foresters, land managers, and environmental citizen groups do and provides an easy (and actually information dense) way of tracking long-term changes using volunteers using the smart phone that many carry in their pocket.
People can do this right now using existing materials at single sites or they can organize networks of camera stations at scales of parks, cities, watersheds, counties, states, countries, or the world.
Right now, MonitorChange is a presentation of an idea. Anyone can modify this in any way they like and implement it at any scale. No copyrights. No permissions needed. 
A short video explaining the MonitorChange can be found at http://youtube/A1ULAsEQAWs.
For more technical details on doing the picture rectification see the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2pEKjw3Idk
Possible places/groups to implement are watershed societies, riverkeepers, stream crossings, trail clubs, stream monitoring groups; coastal beaches, dunes, marshes; lichen plots, restorations sites, forestry sites, parks, refuges, new developments, your backyard, construction of a building, the green-up in spring and the leaf drop in the fall of forests and so forth
For more information and to sign up go to monitorchange.org.
MonitorChange was developed by Sam Droege, a biologist at the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland.

Friday, August 9, 2013

Project Limulus 2013 Season

2013 was Menunkatuck Audubon's fifth year of volunteering for Sacred Heart University's Project Limulus.  It was another disappointing season for finding horseshoe crabs in Guilford.  There seemed to be even less on our beaches than last year.  The number of crabs counted during the surveys had been fairly consistent over the past 3 years but this year that number dropped by more than half.  According to the DEEP, the horseshoe crab population in Long Island Sound is stable, but we saw a significant change on the 2 beaches we survey in Guilford.


The 2013 survey period began on May 8th.and ended on June 25th.  Our Project Limulus team surveyed the 2 beaches at Indian Cove a total of 16 times and counted a total of 49 crabs.  We had to cancel more surveys than usual this year due to inclement weather and holidays.


150 crabs were tagged at the following Guilford beaches:  Indian Cove Public Beach, Indian Cove Private Beach, Shell Beach,Joshua Cove, Chaffinch Island, and Grass Island.

We found 34 recaptures.  Recaptures are crabs which have been previously tagged.

I would like to thank the volunteers who helped with the project at all hours of the day and night, in all kinds of weather.  This study could not be done without you.



                                             2010                     2011                  2012                   2013            

Total crabs tagged-            370                       975                     240                     150
Total recaptures-                  26                        262                       61                       34



                                             2010                    2011                   2012                   2013

Total crabs counted 
during surveys -                   151                      171                     165                       49




Total number of 
surveys conducted           2010                   2011                   2012                   2013

                                                  23                       24                        21                       16


Average number               2010                   2011                   2012                   2013 
of crabs per 
survey                                     6.5                       7.1                      7.8                       3.0