Ansó, 1 June
by Isabel Isherwood - 18:06 on 01 June 2017
We have recently had Tom, Julie, William, Christopher and Benjamin to stay. Tom expressed a desire to see salamanders. We have seen salamanders further east in the Catalan end of the Pyrenees, but although we know they are known from this area we've never seen them. So we (I) confidently assured them that salamanders were out of the question.
On their last day here we took a short walk up through the beechwoods at Linza - where we spent a week cross-country ski-ing back in February - and the boys paddled up the stream. Christopher found the first one, and between Christopher and William they found a total of seven fabulous black-and-yellow adult fire salamanders.
The pools were also full of baby salamanders, strings of toad spawn, big fat tadpoles and adult Pyrenean Triton which is a lovely grey, orange-bellied, endemic newt.
Two days later I went back with Iona and Rowan (who were in school on the previous occasion). There was not an adult salamander to be seen, although the baby ones were still there. Fire salamanders are viviparous - giving birth to live young rather than laying eggs - and I wondered if they give birth to their offspring synchronously and we had just by complete good luck stumbled upon them at just the right moment. Most of the time the adults are not in the water at all, prefering to live in among damp leaf litter in the shady woodland.
Add your comment