The day I had to go herping last weekend was Saturday. The weather wasn't perfect - cool and cloudy, but that was the day (and I've had luck with cool and cloudy before), so Magnolia and I slogged out into a sedge marsh to see what we could find.

I checked in on some tadpoles. There seem to be fewer of them than before, but the ones left are bigger; I suppose the birds and garter snakes (Thamnophis sirtalis) have been picking them off, and others might have been washed downhill into the nearby wet meadow.

Otherwise we heard a few hardy spring peepers (Pseudacris crucifer). I wrote an article for Grid (check out page 36: http://www.gridphilly.com/digital-edition/may-2012-37.html) about peepers and other PA frogs. The article had to be bumped back a month, and I was worried it would be a month too late for readers to actually hear peepers, but a hardy few are still out there.