Wednesday, January 21st
Our January meeting will feature the club's annual Photo Contest, and Board Elections.
If you'd like to enter the contest, simply come to the meeting with a photo of a reptile or amphibian that YOU have taken. You can enter as many as you'd like. Winners will receive a year's membership.
Meetings start promptly at 8pm in the Alumni Room of Medaille College.
Frogwatching
Recently I've had the opportunity to be able to do some herping in the field by participating in the Frogwatch program with the DEC in Reinstein Woods. The Dr. Victor Reinstein Woods Nature Preserve is 292-acre wildlife area in the middle of the suburban development of Depew, NY and is protected and administered by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.
Frogwatch USA is a joint effort between the United States Geologic Survey (USGS) and the National Wildlife Federation. Frogs and toads are important species to study since they are considered "barometer species" for their environment. What this means is that problems with the environment can often be first detected by these species and by studying the trends in their populations we can try and detect and avoid problems in the environment sooner.
Frogwatching does not entail jumping into swamps and trying to chase and count individual frogs and toads. What does happen is that we go to specific sites after sunset and listen for frog calls and identify the species from the calls and rate the intensity of the calls.
Krissy and I were originally tipped off of this opportunity by Society member Val Macer at the February meeting. We were intrigued by the idea of frogwatching and thought it would be a great way to help and to be able to do some great exploring. After a quick phone call to the DEC we were registered for the training.
We showed up for the training one cold March morning and all squeezed in to the garage that is being used as an office until the Nature Center is completed. During the training we were familiarized with calls of the 11 species of frogs and toads that are found in this part of the world as well as what we need to do to record our findings. Things such as air temperature, precipitation, and wind speed are all factors in our observations. If it is too cold, windy, or rainy then it is not a good evening to go frogwatching.
Our first time frogwatching we decided to go to Reinstein before sunset so that we could explore the preserve and find our sites so that we wouldn't get too lost at night. It was a great experience sitting quietly just listening to the night sounds in the preserve and identifying the calls of the frogs we heard.
It has been great exploring the woods at night in a quest for frogs. So far we have heard leopard frogs in our excursions but we hope to discover more as the temperature rises in the evenings and different species begin their breeding seasons. For more information on frogwatching checkout the Frogwatch USA website at http://www.frogwatch.org. If you are interested in more information on the Dr. Victor Reinstein Woods Nature Preserve then checkout the DEC's website about the preserve at http://www.dec.state.ny.us/website/reg9/reinstein.
Help reptiles in need by donating to our Adoption Fund! Your donations will help feed and house reptiles waiting for adoption.