And on Sunday Keith Bertone, Nick Taormina and I checked out some vernal pools in Gloucester, Danvers and Rockport. Some of them didn't turn out to be vernal pools, but I think we'll be submitting 5 more reports to the Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program. And we'll likely get to a few more pools in the next week or so. Board member Dave McKinnon has three more he can lead us to. If you know of any vernal pools that we don't know about, then you should email us... and soon, this is the time to certify.

Saturday we were at Endicott College in Beverly for their Earth Day Event. Vernal ponds and Snakes of New England and the World exhibits under our tent. Thanks to Ann Byers, Colleen Anderson, Marion, Genna and Jay Healey for volunteering. And thanks to Eric Owens for inviting us.

This coming weekend we have two more Earth Day activities... Lynn Woods Earth Fest on Saturday and Gloucester Pride Stride on Sunday. More information available on our Activity Calendar. We would love your help! Let us know.

Friday we participated in the Applied Materials Earth Day at Blackburn Industrial Park. Lots of their employees came by to check out our vernal pond display. Thanks to our volunteers Ann Byers, Colleen Anderson and Viki Rolf. And to Casey Buckles for inviting us.

Meanwhile, we need help for Earth Day at Applied Materials in the Blackburn Industrial Park on Friday  April 20, 2018, 11am-1pm. Vernal Pond display.

Earth Day at Endicott College on Saturday, April 21, 11am-3pm. Vernal Pond and Snakes display.

Plus two more the following weekend. Check out our Activity Calendar for more information on these activities and others.

We had a cool field trip on Friday night to Ravenswood Park with about 25 participants.  We went to Stillington for spotted salamanders.  Lots of peepers and wood frogs seen and calling.  Wood frog and Spotted salamander egg masses. Nice leech. Then to Long and Narrow for fairy shrimp. Great bunch of people, fun trip. If any of you have cool photies from this trip, and would like us to post them on our website, you get a photo credit of course, then please send them along.

Maybe it will warm up enough for another trip soon.

We did a Vernal Ponds Presentation for the New England Herpetological Society at the New England Wildlife Center in South Weymouth on Sunday. We showed our Vernal Ponds DVD and our shiny new powerpoint presentation which was followed by a brief but meaningful field trip to a pool on the Center's property where we did manage to find 3 spotted salamander egg masses and a wood frog egg mass. Nice crowd, fun time.

And...since you're all going to be fired up about field trip season, I know you'll want to volunteer for the Earth Day event at Endicott College in Beverly. Saturday, April 21 from 11am to 3pm. We will likely have a vernal pond display and a snake display. And, don't forget our other three Earth Day events. Check the Activity Calendar on our website.

The rain quit just in time for our field trip tonight. On the way in we saw about five Spotted salamanders migrating and then low and behold we saw hundreds of congressing salamanders in the pool. It was pretty wild down there with frenzied males trying to attract the females to their trail of spermatophores. We also saw fairy shrimp doing there ballet act for us. Spectacular.

I believe it was just last week we made a plea for a generator to keep our animals toasty in the event of a cold weather power outage. We are now the proud owners of a slightly used, and fully capable of our wattage requirements, generator from Rockport contractor Bill Elwell. Thank you Bill.