Vernal Pool #4
May 21, 2018, Emmons Preserve, Kennebunkport, ME
The first thing that I noticed when I arrived to the first vernal pool was that there was water in the pool. The last time I was here there was hardy any and now there was a fair amount. But upon getting onto the bridge over the pool I noticed that there were no egg clusters at all. After carefully looking around I did find four. Last week I had counted 14. What had happened to the other 10? Did something eat them? Were they under the leave litter? I'm not sure.
The water in the pool was probably 4 feet across by 7 or 8 feet long. And there were mosquitoes everywhere. The entire time I was there which was 10+ minutes I was being bitten by numerous mosquitoes. I could even see the larva in the pool, but there wasn't that much. Instead there was were numerous tiny round, dark things moving quickly around the water. Unlike mosquito larva these things didn't seem to have tails.
All of the egg clusters that I could find were both partially out of water. One of the clusters had about a centimeter long greenish larva clearly visible in the eggs, while the other was covered in algae making it very difficult to see inside of it.
It was while I was looking at the small roundish larva that I discovered what, at the time, I thought was a salamander larva. But upon close examination I believed it to be something else. It was moving around the water by a fluttering movement on its sides. There were two darker areas at the head, which I took for eyes and a three pronged tail. Overall the entire thing was kind of pinkish/orangeish. I stopped to take some pictures with my phone and watched the animal for about a minute before it swam off and I couldn't relocate it.
Upon getting home I started to do some searches online to figure out what it was. I looked up salamander larva and that was definitely not it. So I widened the circle and tried FAIRY SHRIMP. This looked a lot like what I had seen and taken pictures of. At this point, I felt confident but I really wanted to get a confirmation. I send the pictures out the Maine Master Naturalist Class that I am enrolled in and threw them up on iNaturalist to see what other people have to say.
All that said, I'm glad that I asked around as I was pointed to A Field Guide to the Animals of Vernal Pools, by Leo P. Kenney and Matthew R. Burne, which got me on the right track. What I saw was swimming on its back and looked nothing like the pictures. I started to flip around the book and found another picture which looked much better, MAYFLY larva.
At the second vernal pool the first thing that I noticed was that the water was extremely cloudy. The other one had been clear and this one had been before today. But at this point it was a milky grey color and totally full of mosquito larva. There were mosquitoes everywhere and in the short time that I was there I was covered in them.
The egg clusters here looked shriveled and very dark. I don't think they are viable, but I don't know for sure. I'll check them again because I want to check the other pool but I don't think there will be any salamanders coming from this second location.
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