The Eye of the Tiger

Last week, I was feeling a bit blue regarding the dreary Michigan weather and unpredictable salamander movements. When I saw that the night of April 2nd would be 55 degrees following heavy afternoon and early evening rains, however, I got out the flashlights and began to draw up road cruising routes. This year, I was primarily after the Eastern Tiger Salamander, Ambystoma tigrinum tigrinum, which I have never seen before. We got an early start through metro Detroit to try to avoid the rush hour traffic and got to our Washtenaw County site around 8:15, a bit too early for salamanders. Things started off slow with only a Wood Frog in the pool, so we hit the adjacent roads, where Chrous Frogs, Leopard Frogs, and Toads were clogging the roadways. Upon getting out to videotape one of the Wood Frogs at 9:15, I turned off the camera and started back to the car when I spotted an oblong shape in the light of our car's headlights about twenty feet up. I ran toward the shape in the otherwise pitch-black night, and, lone behold, it was an Eastern Tiger Salamander!!!! I jumped, in my brothers words, "So high I should have broken my ankles" with elation as I shouted for my family to come join me and photograph the beautiful male Tiger. It was one of the happiest moments I can remember. After that, we hit a spot a little to the west and came up with some good-looking Tremblay's hybrids and a few more frogs before heading home for the night. The next night, we failed to find any Silvery, but we didn't care on account of the Tiger, and we still saw a Spotted Salamander swimming in one of the pools despite the colder temperatures last night. A youtube video of the excursion without locality info will be up sometime this weekend. Until next time from Michigan.
Jefferson

Cool finds. Good to see active Michigan members. Keep it up!