Six Mile Creek

Another post? Shock horror! What has the world come to?

Yesterday I took Cody out for a 2 hr walk to Six Mile Creek. It involved lots of walking, lots of stopping to pee on stuff and a bit of scrambling up/down steep slopes and trying not to fall in the river. It was good. I've got to get some film and take my real camera there one time. The photos from the little digital are not very good but they will have to do for now. Again, click on them if you would like to see them bigger.







These are from when I decided to have an adventure on the way home. It was fun, but we ended up having to back-track to actually get home. We just got to a point along the river where I could have gotten past, but Cody probably would have fallen in the river and pulled me in after. Didn't get any photos of that point as I was to busy tring not to fall in the river. Maybe next time!


This was taken after we climbed up a tiny hill and then walked along the ridge a bit. The only way down from here was to back-track, to jump off, or to scramble down a very steep slope. We opted for the latter, or at least I did. I let Cody off his lead so we didn't end up dragging each other down the slope and what did he do? He just ran face first down to the path and played with sticks while I tried not to fall face first down the slope. Ah, the benefits of having four legs and a tail.


Here is a photo from the bottom of the lookout. Couldn't really climb down there with a dog.


And last, but not least, a picture of Cody. This was the best one I could get as he wasn't being very cooperative with the camera. Maybe he doesn't like having his picture taken. Sorry about the shadow.

Salamanders

Gah! So after about 30 mins of trying to log into stupid flickr to upload the photos it still won't let me sign in. I give up! You can just deal with small photos and then click on them to get bigger ones if you want. So angry!

I went out at about 11pm last Thursday night to go salamander hunting. I went with a couple of my friends to a golf course where we wandered around in the rain and the dark looking for salamanders with torches. Salamanders are pretty cool.
Here is a male Spotted Salamander:


And a female:


And a juvenile:


They pretty much look the same, huh? If you look closely you can see that the male has a bulge at the base of his tail and that the female is fat and full of eggs. The juvenile was just smaller I guess...

We also found some Jefferson Salamanders:


These guys are really fast, but they get confused when you shine your torch on them or put your hand in front of them. Then they just sit there stupidly for a couple of minutes before racing off again.

Because it had rained all the worms were out, and I can tell you that the worms here are massive! Here is a photo I took with my feet for reference:


We also found a couple of frogs. A green frog (I think that's what it was) and a peeper. They are called peepers because they make a very high pitched repetitive peeping noise (surprise, surprise), which sometimes make it feel like your brain is about to explode.
Green frog:


Peeper (these guys are tiny):


We tried to find an elusive Leopard frog, but they were all really far into the marsh. Alas. Thanks to Abby and Jonah for taking me out with them!