Mudpuppying Night - 2015

This evening, I went to my second Mudpuppy Night in Oxford Mills with another grad student in the department.  I described the event quite extensively in my first visit, so you can refresh your memory in my first blog post about the event.

Dr. Fred Scheuler wandering away from the shore and counting the mudpuppies found towards the middle of the creek.

Final holiday update - Mudppy Night in Oxford Mills

One of the several reasons I came back to Peterborough this holiday season was to go to Mudpuppy Night (happening every Friday at 8 PM starting with the first Friday after Thanksgiving) with friends from Peterborough.  I don't remember exactly how I come across information about this event (probably from reading someone's blog post, such as this), but it is something I want to do for a while now. 

On Friday afternoon, we started our journey from Peterborough, and we couldn't had asked for a better weather with just a few degrees below zero.

View from the farm where we dropped Bronte off for the night.

We arrived at Kemptville Creek (near the intersection of Water and Bridge Streets) just around 8 PM and was greeted by the starry sky.  If you Google" mudpuppy" and "Oxford Mills", you'd be certain to come across a lot of information about Mudpuppies (Necturus maculosus), so I won't really go into it here (e.g., this and this).  But if I have describe this place in one word, I'd say it is special (or two words - very special).  There are a lot of places with similar conditions (shallow, rocky, clean, and relatively slow-flowing water), but to have tens of wild salamanders right in front of you, I doubt there is another place like it in Canada (or perhaps even North America).  Plus, Dr. Fred Scheuler is a very knowledge expert on Mudpuppies, so coming here, seeing the Mudpuppies in-person, and talking with Fred is the only reasonable way to learn about Mudpuppies.