Wednesday 1/27/2021, 7am & 9am

Overcast and raining off and on all morning, 45-49F.

7am:

(7:20-9:00am actually)
Documented 35 newts, 14 of them new since yesterday evening (flags #26 through 39). #39 was actually right near my car, and wasn't there when I left but had appeared by the time I got back.
Missing:
Flag #13- one of the two newts was missing (already documented missing by Merav yesterday). I marked one X on the flag for the one missing newt.
Flag #7- both of the two newts were missing. This was near an HTH zone so I assumed they took them, but actually I guess not if these were there yesterday, since HTH hadn't come to clear their area yet at this time today. I marked 2 Xs on the flag and left it.
22 moving vehicles, 1 parked.
Partway through my walk a truck with a snowplow attachment came and scraped all the fallen rocks out of the road, which included part of an HTH study area (got a photo).
Saw 2 alive newts downhill off the road, racing full tilt (as much as a newt can) towards the reservoir, and some live ones in both HTH study sites' buckets.

9am:

(9:20-10:30am actually)
Documented 43 newts, 6 of them new since 7am (flags #40 through 45).
Missing:
Flag #31 newt had been removed by HTH, since they were within one of their study areas. I left the flag and marked an X on it
Flag #30 newt was also in that study area, but HTH left the tail behind, so I left the flag and counted it as still being a newt.
26 moving vehicles, 3 parked, 2 bicycles, 2 hikers. The latter 4 had various friendly "newt patrol!" comments. Ran into HTH right after they'd cleared the two study areas, and had a brief chat about the flags and how many newts were in those buckets (8 & 5, I think it was).

Many of the newts that had been fresh at 7am were pretty broken up already at 9am, which surprised me. Sitting in my parked car at ~10:40 I saw an alive newt clamber up the little embankment in front of my car, headed away from the reservoir, but it turned out to have severe cranial injuries and had expired mid-step in the little time it took me to put the flash on my camera and go look at it.

Publicado el 28 de enero de 2021 a las 04:29 AM por sea-kangaroo