We do MOnthly Meetups!
We aim for the "Last-sunday-of-the-Month"
usually, but missed this time!
Saturday night, june 10 from 8:30-10pm
We sometimes procrastinate organizing these meetups because it promotes creativity. That is not actually why we procrastinate organizing these meetups… Well anyway, June’s meetup will be our 14th one! And it’s happening only two weeks after our most recent meetup, (Spiders at the Windsor Grassland Wildlife Management Area) so we do apologize for the shorter notice. You’ll have only a week to prepare for this adventure.
This month’s meetup is Saturday, June 10th from 8:30 to roughly 10pm, at a habitat mosaic and popular tourist stop in Quechee, Vermont. We have our special Spider Man, Michael Quinn, once again as our guide in this new location. Michael has spent many hours observing spider species in the habitats available to explore in the Upper Valley. He’s a long-time educator with the local public school system, and a passionate generalist-naturalist who always seems happy to hear any question asked.
Once again, we promise this adventure will be less spooky than it sounds, and if you have a fear of the topic we promise to help rather than hurt in your quest to build a relationship of appreciation with these amazing creatures. This June 10th meetup will be Part 2 of our Spider Safari – this time the night version! Using our headlamp beams and scanning through the mix of habitat types available in this beautiful river-adjacent mosaic, we’ll be learning all about the different spider species in the neighborhood. Michael will guide us through the roles they play trapping and tackling a multitude of species in numerous different habitats.
This meetup location is by the Simon Pierce restaurant, next to a big magnificent waterfall, but RSVP (HartfordSalamanderTeam@gmail.com) for more specific parking details and so that we might know how many people to expect.
These meetups have a guide present – a naturalist or science educator of sorts, to help make the experience more educational for everyone. But you’re also encouraged to bring and share what you already know, along with your curiosities and open questions. If there’s a topic in particular you enjoy studying we’d all love to hear about it. Everyone can play a teaching role, that mindset has made our 12 meetups (its been a year!) so far quite rich and fun. Even at meetups where we’re stung by wasps (July was exciting), or fail to find our target species (like in April when the vernal pool we visited was still frozen and apparently lifeless), everyone seems to have a laugh together and learn something new. That sense of “community” that’s so present each last-sunday-of-the-month is one of the main reasons we’re keeping on with the monthly meetups!
The meetups exist in large part to connect the neighbors participating in the regional Salamander Team project, aimed to help frogs and salamanders migrate safely each spring (they often have to cross roads and get run over by car traffic). If you’d like to join the conversation on the Salamander Team community project, you’re invited to join the email list. In addition to the meetups, we are slowly and steadily figuring out how to set up bigger educational opportunities for all of us, like a comprehensive Plant ID program.
As always, send an email or facebook message to RSVP or to join the email list for more details on our shenanigans.
PAST MONTHLY MEETUPS... WE LOOK TO PHENOLOGY TO PICK EVENT THEMES ...
February’s “Last-Sunday-of-the-Month” meetup was our 10th one! And it was the last one before our annual volunteer training and team training, which was held remotely on Monday evening March 13th.
Anyway, this month’s meetup was Sunday February 26, from 10am-noon at Paradise Park in Windsor. We had a special guest guiding our adventure this time, who had personal experience with past research surveys done on local mammal populations. Wessel’s Reading the Forested Landscape also got special attention in our discussion, so feel encouraged to remember where you left that book. This guide was (and is still) also one of people most familiar with the Windsor Grassland, which is a gorgeous space just down the road from Paradise Park where snow buntings have been seen in recent months.
Sunday January 29 was supposed to be "subnivean lifestyles and deep snow hunting strategies" but instead we stared at speckled alder tongue galls
Boston Lot Lake is a short uphill to an interesting loop around the lake, crossing over a small dam and past some power line clearings that make for interesting warbler potential in spring, and inevitable intimate encounters with speckled alder during the bare winter. There are a number of clusters of the shrubby shrub even before really reaching the loop, displaying their little cones and catkins both simultaneously (monoecious is a cool word)… and in some places we found strange looking desicated leafy bits erupting from the cones. Thanks to a diligent salamander team member and a lot of up-close staring, it was ID’d as a fungal plant pathogen (taphrina alni) causing a bunch of alder tongue galls. When those were fresh, they apparently would have been tongue colored. If lucky they look disguised as flower petals (maybe..), but otherwise they look like slightly unsettling tongues… either way its just a sneaky but otherwise friendly (to us) fungus
Sunday November 27 was something like
"Hibernation and the Gradations in the Art of Napping,"
... at hartford's Hurricane forest wildlife refuge
November we got together at the Hurricane Forest Wildlife Refuge in Hartford! That’s a lesser known spot (apparently) that’s definitely recommended – once again we had luck and found a little eastern red-backed salamander and a bunch of fungi. Plus we saw enough fresh woodpecker holes that we were able to compare the shapes and sizes that the different species create. Our group spent a good deal of time talking about the amphibian conservation part of the Salamander Team project, which honestly we usually forget to mention with everything there is to look at and talk about. The monthly meetups are a great time to meet some other amphibian crossing guard volunteers, and to ponder ways you might enjoy getting involved in a way or another.
October we called "Landscapes Preparing for Winter"
marsh-billings-Rockefeller Natl' Park, near Woodstock, Vt
With October now past, the Salamander Team had its 7th monthly meetup on this glorious Sunday! We met near the parking lot for the Marsh Billings Rockefeller farm museum, then we did our longest hike yet up to the Pogue.
Our guide this time was versed in the background of the farm (and the wider park), so we learned history as we encountered stuff like a patient barred owl, a red backed salamander, mallards and mergansers and a turtle… and a bunch of fungi, many of which we were able to ID! We were even able to find some chaga to show the group what it looks like, and we luckily had someone in attendance that knew how to make decoctions and tea. That’s kind of par the course with these meetups.
September was "Ecology from a Mountain Vista"
Wright's Mountain in Bradford VT
The background’s a neat view of the meetup spot from the day – Wright’s Mountain in Bradford.
The Salamander Team meets every last-sunday-of-the-month from roughly 10 to noon at a different pretty nature spot around the neighborhood (usually with an expert naturalist to help everyone learn more). This time we went as far north as we have yet to, teaming up with the Bradford Conservation Commission to log some species from their wonderful mountain trail system. The hike from the north parking lot is maybe the most efficient possible in terms of steps-taken to an amazing view. Feels like you don’t really walk at all then there’s a couple of different huge vistas to choose from. At this meetup we saw an unidentified giant bird (maybe an osprey? it had confusing colors, like white patches in unexpected spots) and paid special attention to the plant communities ascending the mountainside. It’s really easy to spend 30 minutes standing in one spot talking about a shrub.
August's Insect "Net-working" Event - With Real Nets!
East End Park in Woodstock, VT
The August Insect “Net-working” event happened to land on a beautifully perfect morning, continuing our streak of lucky weather conditions for the salamander team’s monthly meetup. April was about vernal pools, May about spring ephemerals, June about orchids in the bog, July about fungi, August we chased bugs with nets!
We were at East End Park near Woodstock (which has a beautiful little trail that crosses through a surprising number of distinct habitats), led by a specialist in Lady Beetles (and we learned how to contribute to the Vermont Center for Ecostudies’ Lady Beetle Atlas). We found a number of butterflies, moths, flies and hoverflies and wasps, several species of bees, more mergansers and a couple bald eagles, numerous leaf-hoppers and leaf-eaters and eaters of leaf-eaters. East End Park is a beautiful little spot, highly recommended!
July's fungi Foray and wasp-hangout
At our homebase: the Hartford Town Forest in Hartford, VT
July’s Fungi Foray
In July we had a wonderful crowd, and our party happened to experience the bad kind of exciting encounter with some very social insects at our Fungi Foray. You can maybe ask about it on the 28th, but the memory is still pretty fresh… Still, we did also find some awesome examples of amanitas and russulas (and lobster mushrooms) and some curious polypores. Plus found an interesting morph of a little salamander, along with frogs in a stream and sting-soothing plants. We happened to have a couple of nurses in attendance, but we also had a handful in attendance with knowledge of medical applications of local plants and fungi. Meetups are a fun chance to learn about our community’s knowledge and passions.
June Bog party with the showy lady slippers
the one and only Eschua Bog in Hartland, VT
Thanks to our guide Ryan Rebozo, we got to Eschua Bog just as the lady slippers were at their most showy (Ryan is Director of Conservation Science at Hartford’s own Vermont Center for Ecostudies. Also, he’s parent of a goose that he just dug a pond for.) Ryan taught our little group about all of Eschua’s plants (there were a huge number of flowers beyond just the orchids) as we enjoyed rhubarb coffee cake thoughtfully baked by a beloved Salamander Team member.
May 29 was our Spring Ephemeral Scavenger Hunt
at the homebase, Hartford town forest on Reservoir road
It was wonderful to spend time with some team members that Sunday morning, exploring the Hartford Town Forest and looking/listening for ephemerals and visitors and year-round presences. Fantastic to meet some new people and make new friends. Somehow magically, we ran into a local mountain biker that was able to share a beautiful history of the Hartford Town Forest (and adjacent Hurricane Forest Wildlife Refuge). More than one of us later remarked “it was like we hired him.” Great to meet you Bill, thanks for that. To everyone, thank you so much for bringing all you do to this inspiring little community. It’s wonderful that we’re now actively pondering new ways that we can all get together and interact
April was our first ever in-person meetup! vernal pool visit in
the glorious Hartford town forest!
Our First Ever In-person Meet-up! April 10 – Vernal Pool Guided Tour
Long-time Hartford resident Jon Bouton led the group to a vernal pool in the Hartford Town Forest (parking lot on Reservoir Road). The pool was still frozen at the base and we didn’t observe amphibian activity, but that pool has been known to host rarer mole salamander varieties like the Jefferson.
This pool is exciting to Hartford residents because its been actively contributing to salamander species surveys! The Conservation Commission has research permits to safely (without harming the critters) catch and count the total numbers of different salamander species that show up on Big Nights during their spring migration. That catch-and-count activity sometimes offers locals a rare opportunity to see dozens if not hundreds of yellow-spotted salamanders in broad daylight. Or, ya know, we might show up a little too early in the season and just see ice. Still fun to hang out with the community