On Wednesday of last week, Emily Field, the state herpetologist out of the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science in Jackson, came to visit the farm. In August of last year I snapped a picture of a salamander that fell out of one of our silage tarps as we were unfolding it. It’s always cool to see critters, especially reclusive ones like salamanders. Turns out this fellow was a tiger salamander. As I later learned, there hasn’t been a recorded sighting of a tiger salamander in Mississippi for about 50 years! They were assumed to be completely gone from the state.
I spent late winter and spring on the hunt for salamander eggs. I found lots of eggs in our ponds, at the time we thought they were spotted salamander. But within the past few weeks we’ve spotted three more tiger salamanders! My mom found one while she was weeding the carrots. Randy caught sight of one in a storage room at wash/pack. And I had to stop for one that was trucking across our farm road. That’s a lot of salamander sightings considering we’ve been living
here for oven ten years and I’ve only ever seen two other salamanders. Surely they have at least one breeding site on our farm. How cool is that?
So Emily came to see the farm, and the locations where we found the salamander, and the ponds where they might be breeding. She seemed to think that we have a lot of excellent salamander habitat. We flipped over all the folded silage tarps. We did find a tiny little slimy salamander, but no tigers. Hopefully next year, during salamander breeding season in late winter, Emily will be able to lead a more comprehensive survey for tiger salamanders here on the farm. In the meantime, if you see a salamander, especially those of you who live near the farm, please take a picture and send it to me!
Small Shares
- Fingerling Potatoes
- Green Cabbage
- Rainbow Carrots
- Cucumbers
- Zephyr Squash
Full Share
- Fingerling Potatoes
- Green Cabbage
- Rainbow Carrots
- Assorted Tomatoes
- Basil
- Red Onions
- Zucchini
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