I would love...

...to update y'all on life at Coweeta, but I'm rushed for time with this limited internet access, and instead, I'll summarize with some cute salamander photos.

A few weekends ago, I took a trip a few hours away to chase a few new species. I found them, and I also turned up this beautiful monster in a nearby stream. Eastern Hellbender (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis) overlooking her domain.

A lot of my job consists of checking leaf litter traps in streams for aquatic species, but we've started a new project involving the hybridization and activity patterns of two species of terrestrial Plethodontids at Coweeta. The cuter of the two, the Red-legged Salamander (Plethodon shermani), is pictured here. These guys are ridiculously abundant on the forest floor at night.

Our leaf-litter traps are geared towards finding other species, but I'm certainly not going to turn down the chance to photograph the beautiful and charismatic Red Salamander (Pseudotriton ruber) when it's a bycatch.

Speaking of Pseudotriton, I was surprised (but elated) to see two of the Red Salamander's cousins, the Mud Salamander (Pseudotriton montanus), at Sandy Creek when I visited Athens this past weekend. This species is really uncommon throughout much of the Piedmont, and July is possibly the worst time of year to search for them. And oh yeah, I also saw some awesome people in Athens :)

Perhaps the coolest thing I've seen here happened last week around Coweeta. After finishing checking some leaf-litter traps, I kept flipping rocks in hopes of turning up something to alleviate the boredom. Under a promising rock alongside the edge of the stream, I flipped up male and female Black-bellied Salamanders (Desmognathus quadramaculatus) guarding their eggs. You can't tell from the photos, but these things are behemoths--around 10 inches each. Momma on top and daddy on the bottom, with a small fraction of their clutch.

The next generation. These little guys were really near hatching (in fact, several hatched and swam away as I photographed them). Here, you can see their unvascularized gills (they live in water with such high O2 content that they can get all they need through their skin) and the yellow yolk in the belly, which will provide the young with enough food to last their first few days or weeks outside of the egg. Too cute.

So long for now!