{"id":41537,"date":"2026-04-19T10:12:59","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T14:12:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=41537"},"modified":"2026-04-19T10:12:59","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T14:12:59","slug":"nights-in-april","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2026\/04\/nights-in-april\/","title":{"rendered":"Nights in April"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You can expect to find things like this, if you&#8217;re looking around. Two short clips, one from last night, one from, damn, ten days ago &#8211; I&#8217;d been hoping to get some more to go along with it, but there&#8217;s been no further sign as yet.<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding:56.25% 0 0 0;position:relative;\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/1184546246?badge=0&amp;autopause=0&amp;player_id=0&amp;app_id=58479\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\" title=\"A couple of night finds\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><script src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/api\/player.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>A note about the toads. This isn&#8217;t actually mating, since they do external fertilization<strong>:<\/strong> the female finds a body of water after the male grabs ahold (amplexus,) and releases her eggs while the male releases his sperms at the same time, so the actual fertilization takes place in the water. The male was simply waiting, though perhaps goading the female to carry on. <em>Why<\/em> he didn&#8217;t seem to have a clue, I can&#8217;t say &#8211; amphibians are supposedly very attuned to the sounds of potential mates, and spadefoots and southern toads sound nothing alike. Listen, what anyone gets up to is their own business and I&#8217;m not judging, but as Hall &#038; Oates says, &#8220;If you&#8217;re in it for reproduction, you ain&#8217;t gonna get too far.&#8221; I think that&#8217;s how the song goes&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the ducklings first appeared with mom at dusk, slipping under cover before I could get upstairs to the camera and long lens. Last year, at least <a href=\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2025\/04\/estate-find-xv\/\" target=\"_blank\">one mother duck<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2025\/06\/just-before-dark\/\" target=\"_blank\">probably more<\/a>) had used Turtle Island as a nice overnight roost, but that&#8217;s too far under water now to serve, which is a shame because it was a safe spot<strong>;<\/strong> I witnessed a raccoon hunting on the pond shores at the same time that I was watching this expanded brood. So she might have decided there wasn&#8217;t a good place to sleep within my sight, or she might simply be cycling around the roost spots, because that does seem to be a trait.<\/p>\n<p>Did these emerge from our own nest box? I can&#8217;t be sure &#8211; I&#8217;ve never seen any activity at it, but it tends to be subtle and brief when it does occur, the female entering and leaving within seconds, so it&#8217;s possible that I was missing it. I have plans to make a small indicator on the outside of the box when there&#8217;s sufficient weight inside, but that won&#8217;t happen until after nesting season now, and I&#8217;d have to take it down and put it back up again, not an idle chore.<\/p>\n<p>For giggles though, go back and watch the duck portion of the video again, this time watching the surroundings. See all those little starlike points of light among the foliage and debris? They&#8217;re all reflections from spider eyes, likely the fishing spiders, and yes, there are a lot of them. Most are tiny, way out of proportion to the brightness of the reflections at only a few millimeters in body length, but yeah, scads of them. Truth is, you can really only see this if the light source and your eyes (or the camera) are close together &#8211; I see it constantly with the headlamp, so who knows how many <em>you<\/em> might be missing? Spiders are all over the place and generally have no affect on people, but folks are often shocked to see just how many.<\/p>\n<p>You know you&#8217;ll see more duckling clips when I get them, so keep checking back. I&#8217;m doing routine night patrols myself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You can expect to find things like this, if you&#8217;re looking around. Two short clips, one from last night, one from, damn, ten days ago &#8211; I&#8217;d been hoping to get some more to go along with it, but there&#8217;s been no further sign as yet. A note about the toads. This isn&#8217;t actually mating, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3,3809],"tags":[4948,4818,8065,6785,7845,8206,8128,7846,8652,8064,4947],"class_list":["post-41537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-photo","category-video","tag-aix-sponsa","tag-amplexus","tag-anaxyrus-terrestris","tag-ducklings","tag-eastern-spadefoot","tag-eye-reflections","tag-hatchling","tag-scaphiopus-holbrookii","tag-shes-a-bug-eater","tag-southern-toad","tag-wood-duck"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41537"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41540,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41537\/revisions\/41540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}