Last night, March 20th, four of us met at the entrance to the Hannacroix Creek Preserve around 7:45 pm. It was just after dark with light rain falling. The temperature was hovering around 40F and dropping after a warm afternoon in the 50s.
We only found a handful of frogs trying to cross the road and no live salamander. The rain was light and had started late in the day, the temperature was so cold that several frogs seemed immobilized in the road until we picked them up and moved them across.
Our identification of the frogs may not be quite right, but our current guess is that we moved 3 spring peepers, 3 grey tree frogs, 1 pregnant wood frog, and 1 green frog.
We also found 1 dead wood frog, with her eggs on the tarmac, two dead spring peepers, and one dead spotted salamander.
The previous night, March 19, I went out alone and moved one wood frog and one green frog, but came in as there was a lot of thunder and lightning. The next morning, at 7:45 am on March 20th, I counted 73 corpses of amphibians that had not made it across the road. That was clearly the night of the big migration.
This Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday nights are rainy again but looks like they might be too cold for any amphibians remaining in the woods to head down to the vernal pools by the Hudson River Interpretive Trail.
A big thank you to Larry, Nels, and Nancy H. for their help last night.