{"id":13642,"date":"2013-08-30T17:42:54","date_gmt":"2013-08-30T22:42:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/?p=13642"},"modified":"2013-09-25T12:35:26","modified_gmt":"2013-09-25T17:35:26","slug":"threatened-eastern-spadefoot-disappears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/?p=13642","title":{"rendered":"Threatened Eastern Spadefoot Disappears"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Threatened Eastern Spadefoot (Scaphiopus holbrookii)<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The Eastern spadefoot (Scaphiopus holbrookii<\/em>) is a rare species in New England, listed as either\u00c2\u00a0threatened or endangered in\u00c2\u00a0Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.\u00c2\u00a0 Most often encountered during warm spring rains when they raucously and frenetically engage in mating, spadefoots had evaded our late summer and early fall hatchling searches for decades \u00c2\u00a0until this Wednesday.\u00c2\u00a0 They surprised us as we patrolled a diamondback terrapin nesting site, looking for hatchling emergence holes and tracks\u00c2\u00a0of emerging hatchlings.\u00c2\u00a0 The weather was gray overcast with an occasionaly light drizzle with the temperature in the mid-60s.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Faux “Emergence Hole” Proves to Be a Toad Burrow<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The best way to identify a hatching terrapin nest is to spot an emergence hole from which the first babies escape.\u00c2\u00a0 As we crisscrossed sandy dunes abutting a lush salt marsh, Sue Wieber Nourse discovered an “emergence hole.”\u00c2\u00a0 As she gently excavated the hole to examine the egg chamber with her fingertips,\u00c2\u00a0she surprisingly felt a soft spongy critter rather than hard shells or egg shards.\u00c2\u00a0 What looked exactly like a dune terrapin emergence hole proved to be a spadefoot burrow.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Spadefoot (Left) and Fowler’s Toad (Right)<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Sue Wieber Nourse encountered three more nearly identical “emergence holes” in these dunes, one occupied by another spadefoot and two holding Fowler’s toads.\u00c2\u00a0 These tiny toads were all the same size, less than two inches long.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Spadefoot Distorted “Hourglass” Design<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Each of the spadefoots had the characteristic distorted hourglass design on their backs and stared back at us with cat-like rather than toad-like\u00c2\u00a0eyes.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Eponymous Spadefoot “Spades”<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

They also sported an eponymous dark, sharp\u00c2\u00a0“spade” on the bottom, interior side of each back limb (see above).<\/p>\n

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Closeup of Eponymous Spadefoot “Spade”<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The image above presents a closeup\u00c2\u00a0view of the left rear limb with a clear view of the dark, sharp eponymous “spade” that lends its name to this species.<\/p>\n

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IF YOU HAVE AN iPad & CAN’T SEE VIDEO: CLICK HERE<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Eastern Spadefoot Disappears Under the Sand<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This film clip offers an excellent\u00c2\u00a0perspective on how the spadefoot uses\u00c2\u00a0these\u00c2\u00a0sharp\u00c2\u00a0rear “spades” to dig backwards into the sand and to disappear from sight in little over two minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Threatened Eastern Spadefoot (Scaphiopus holbrookii) The Eastern spadefoot (Scaphiopus holbrookii) is a rare species in New England, listed as either\u00c2\u00a0threatened or endangered in\u00c2\u00a0Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.\u00c2\u00a0 Most often encountered during warm spring rains when they raucously and frenetically engage in mating, spadefoots had evaded our late summer and early fall hatchling searches for decades […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[826],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13642"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13642"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13685,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13642\/revisions\/13685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}