The frogs said nope, Thursday night only!

Well the temperatures have dropped. Which means frog activity has also dropped. We didn’t find any that were frozen but we did find one that was cold and just hunched down in place. So we helped him find a burrow. The main pond was frozen on Wednesday! About half an inch of ice and apparently a first! The egg masses are surviving so far. We place vegetation on top of them for them to sink and not freeze.

On Thursday night though, it rained and the temperatures were good and we caught a lot of crawfish frogs in our buckets this morning! Some were leaving and some were entering. The ones that were leaving we put in borrows because it’s going to be cold this weekend. We hope the ones that were entering will keep warm! Two male crawfish frogs came back to the office with us because they were pink on their underside (they are cold). They are in a tank with some water and warming lights to warm up. We will keep them over the weekend and if temperatures are good and they look better, they will be released on Monday.

On Thursday, I (Sarah) got to go out on the refuge with a former Department of Natural Resources employee who was looking for a rare plant, Snow Trillium. They have been looking for this plant in many different counties throughout Indiana and try to take a sample from them so they can get a better understanding of why and where they are most abundant. It likes to grow near creeks on the rocky slopes where there is less leaf litter. It should be flowering around this time of year but we were not successful in finding one!

I (Audrey) participated in a prescribed fire on Thursday at Big Oaks! I will write a separate blog for that. Stay tuned!

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