Nature walks

My 13yo dd J came back from walking the dog a little while ago, and said “Mom, you have to come with me! I have something cool to show you!”

We walked down the street, and up a walking path that leads alongside a man-made lake drainage ditch (called a “creek” but it’s mostly just swamp!). Part of it leads off, away from the creek, for additional runoff, and this is where she brought me. “Look right there.” I bent over the marshy water, and right there was a slimey pile of algae, with a hole in the center about 3″ wide. Inside were well over 100 tiny tadpoles, about 3/8″ long. There are also several other piles of frog eggs. They were wet but weren’t underwater, so I am not sure if they are dead or developing.

Around this area, there is more nature than I ever realized. J walks down there all the time, and she brings the boys there often. Along the way there is a rather large hole in the side of a hill, obviously dug out by an animal, as the dirt is all down the hillside under the den. If I had to guess, I would say this is where some of those noisy night time coyotes live. I had never noticed the den before, but now I’m thinking about staking it out with a camera. It is across the creek, in full view of the walking path.
There are birds EVERYWHERE. I could hear more birds than see them, but J described to me many kinds I’ve never seen before. And remember, this is less than two blocks from my house!

J managed to find a frog, which gave her a run for her money, but she caught it. It played dead for a few minutes and she let it go. There are little black spiders ALL OVER in the dead grass. UGH. I’m not a big fan of spiders, but these ones move out of the way really fast, so hopefully I won’t have to get a close up of any. I know there are black salamanders in the creek area, too. Actually we have one that lives in our sprinkler system control box in our yard, so we don’t have to go too far to see it.

All in all, it was a nice little walk, and I can’t wait to bring the boys over there to see the tadpoles and the frog eggs. I am curious how we could go about bringing some home. If someone who has done it could please reply and tell me what we need to do, I’d be very thankful! I’d love to let the boys watch the tadpoles develop, close up.

Near our house we also have owls and a nesting pair of hawks we see frequently. We have sparrows and blackbirds nesting in our birdhouses (the pesky woodpecker left the birdhouse, only to spend mornings pounding on the flashing of our house!) It looks like we have plenty of nature around us to keep us quite occupied for the summer.