On Friday, February 7, 2020, I achieved a long-awaited personal "first"! I saw Yellow-Spotted Salamanders searching for mates in my pond. I had long known this must happen, but -- unlike frogs -- salamanders do not sing loudly while calling for companionship. They are silent searchers. Yet salamanders there must be. I had seen one on several occasions in a hole under the cabin, and my grandson Adam had once shown me a salamander tadpole he netted in the pond. So I was very excited to actually see them in the pond.
You might think that I have chosen a rather poor photograph for this blog page -- and in most respects you would be right. But if you use just a bit of imagination, you can see the large (7") yellow-spotted salamander crawling just over the top of the submerged lily pads. You can also see that some of the submerged lily pads have been scoured clean of the brown pond scum and show up lime green. That scouring was caused by the movements of multiple salamanders crawling around searching for mates. In future Februaries I will try to remain alert and look for salamanders whenever I see the tell-tale lime green leaves.
Here is an image from the web of a more clearly visible yellow-spotted salamander:
