Spring!

It is a beautiful time at Lone Rock Point. With the weather warming up, life is beginning to emerge. Over the past couple weeks we have been experiencing heavy rainfall and a lot of snow melt. This is great because it is creating vernal pools, like this one.

Vernal pools are crucial because they are breeding areas for certain species like the blue spotted salamander, one of our focal species. There are also mini “vernal pools” present at my spot right now. While it might not exactly be a vernal pool, more like a puddle that connects to the lake, however serves similar purposes to a vernal pool.

This is the “vernal pool” that I was talking about above. If you look closely you can see a school of small fish. While it was difficult to identify the fish, I believe it was just minnows. In this puddle, they were using the leaves and sticks as what looked to be a breeding or a feeding site. While all this rainfall and snowmelt can be important for establishing temporary habitats for amphibians and aquatic life, it can cause a lot of sediment from entering the lake.

This sediment is not good for life on the shoreline. This reduces the amount of sunlight penetrating the water column, making it difficult for algae to photosynthesize. The sediment also interferes with respiration of fish, It gets in their gills

The silver maples are budding!

Also baby cedars are starting to take over the area. Cedars love Lone Rock Point because they thrive in the rocky environment.

For some reason the picture of my sketch won’t upload all the way. However the sketch is of a mallard that I saw at Lone Rock. Other bird species I saw was a pileated woodpecker. I also could hear chickadees, I am not exactly sure what kind of chickadee.