Again With the Water! (and the frog calls!)

 

Homer Lake Wetland, October 8, 2021, after approx. 1.33" of rain this past week

The photo above shows the wetland today. Reviewing my weather app it looks like there has been a little over 1.3" of rain since it was nothing but mud twelve days ago September 26 (photo below), and cracked earth on September 29. I think the hardening of the dry ground contributes to the water running off of the adjacent areas and refilling the wetland rather than soaking in where it fell. As I walked through the wetland today the ground under the water was still hard and I sunk only slightly into mud once or twice. Today's amount of water in the wetland is the most I've seen since early September.

Homer Lake Wetland, September 26, 2021

So what happens when the wetland is wet again after twelve days of dry? First off, as the grasses expanded to fill in where the water levels were shrinking, along with them come caterpillars, which now find themselves underwater or floating on the top or clinging to plants still reaching above the water. (In the deepest area of the wetland today, the water was probably eight to ten inches deep.) While there were caterpillars floating (making weak efforts to "swim") and clinging to vegetation above water (see below), it seems there were also caterpillars still alive clinging to submerged vegetation. The sweeps of my net in areas where there was submerged vegetation inevitably brought out numerous caterpillars, most of which seemed to be still alive -- perhaps not thriving, but still alive. Amazing.

One of Dozens of Caterpillars Floating, Still Alive, on the Water's Surface

Multiple Caterpillars (at least five) Clinging to Vegetation Surrounded by Water

Of course, what was apparently bad news for the caterpillars was good news for the aquatic inhabitants of the wetland. My net sweeps produced many still living dragonfly naiads, snails and water beetles in addition to a couple of leeches and an aquatic fly larva. This post is long enough so some of those will be featured soon in upcoming posts. One observation though was that with the exception of some of the snails, almost everything aquatic coming up in the net was small. I did not, for example, find any darner naiads or other dragonfly naiads that appeared to be approaching their final stage in the water. The beetle species were small as well.

One other surprise -- during the two hours I was at the wetland late this morning, I heard in the woods surrounding the area spring peepers, boreal chorus frogs and gray tree frogs calling. They were not calling "like crazy" as they do in the spring, but I did hear multiple calls from all three of these frog species. Pam at the Homer Lake Interpretive Center suggested that because in the Fall the length of daylight is like that of the Spring, perhaps the length of the days encourages the calling. Perhaps so! To be clear though, none of these frogs were at the wetland itself -- all were calling from the woods surrounding the wetland. Alternatively, perhaps it's a "last hurrah" before hunkering down for winter?

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