{"id":4599,"date":"2015-02-18T21:41:45","date_gmt":"2015-02-19T02:41:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/?p=4599"},"modified":"2023-06-30T11:54:35","modified_gmt":"2023-06-30T15:54:35","slug":"amphibian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/2015\/02\/amphibian\/","title":{"rendered":"Amphibian"},"content":{"rendered":"

This afternoon I was walking in Purissima Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserve, through Douglas Fir woodlands, along a ridge that was about 1,400 feet aboe sea level. I happened to look down at my feet, and there was a — well, no, it wasn’t a lizard, it was some kind of salamander.<\/p>\n

Sometimes it pays to walk slowly and deliberately. I got down on my knees to look more closely.<\/p>\n

\"BlogFeb1815\"<\/p>\n

I haven’t seen seen a salamander since I moved to California more than five years ago, so I stopped to watch it for a while. I placed a quarter on the ground, to give a sense of scale in the photos I was taking. The salamander obligingly stepped right on the quarter:<\/p>\n

\"BlogFeb1815b\"<\/p>\n

It was fun to watch it walk — it had that rolling, deliberate salamander gait, so very different from the quicker-than-the-eye sprinting done by lizards. Eventually, it walked off the trail and disappeared into the leaf litter.<\/p>\n

When I got home, I looked on the California Herps online identification guide<\/a>. I’m pretty sure it was a Rough-skinned Newt (Taricha granulosa<\/em>). Another possibility would be the Red-bellied Newt (Taricha rivularis<\/em>) — but the eye of my newt showed some whitish yellow, while T. Rivularis<\/em> has uniformly dark eyes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This afternoon I was walking in Purissima Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserve, through Douglas Fir woodlands, along a ridge that was about 1,400 feet aboe sea level. I happened to look down at my feet, and there was a — well, no, it wasn’t a lizard, it was some kind of salamander. Sometimes it pays … Continue reading “Amphibian”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,6],"tags":[571,948],"class_list":["post-4599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bay-area-calif","category-winter-wet-season","tag-amphibian","tag-herps"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4599"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4605,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4599\/revisions\/4605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}