The Star Goes To A Salamander Hunt: In Search Of Rare Species

A car caravan snaked through the back roads of Bridgehampton on Saturday night in the moonlight. Each set of headlights following taillights closely made the 20 vehicles appear as segments of a single creature on a mission. In a way it was, given that each driver followed blindly the turns of the one ahead. Their destination was known only to the lead driver, Andy Sabin of the South Fork Natural History Society.

It was a secret society this night because the eastern tiger salamander, the world's largest land-dwelling variety, is vulnerable, especially at the height of an early breeding season.

Brief Trip Up

Mr. Sabin, a kindly, intense man, loves salamanders and has sought out the haunts of the six-inch-long tiger and the smaller marbled, spotted, blue-spotted, four-toed, and red-backed species native to the South Fork. Only the spotted is commonly found, and the tiger and blue-spotted salamanders are on the state's list of endangered species. The South Fork is the only place in the state where the elusive tiger salamanders are found.

On Saturday, at a prearranged meeting place in the dark, Mr. Sabin gathered around him hip-booted naturalists, amateur herpetologists wearing miners' lamps, curious adults with flashlights, and a half-dozen of the most natural hunters of slithery things -kids. He described their quarry and the importance of keeping under wraps the exact location of the kettlehole they would be visiting after a short drive.

Mr. Sabin whetted their appetites; the previous night at another vernal pond he had seen 19 egg masses and two adults.

Egg masses, he explained, were the end result of a relatively brief interlude in the tiger's mostly subterranean existence. The tigers are a species of "mole" salamander that hibernates underground in winter and feeds above and below ground in summer on worms, insects, mice, and small snakes. The alarm clock that wakes them from their winter sleep takes the form of 50-degree temperatures and a soaking rainfall that trickles its way down through the soil.

Seventy Spots Lost

Rainwater is the tigers' signal to push to the surface and begin their annual journey to the ancestral spawning pool. They are known to wander up to 1,000 feet away from their pools, and because they migrate only when it rains, the return trip can take time. Mr. Sabin told the group that this year's temperate winter weather had accelerated the tigers' trip to their pools, and that they should be at the height of their breeding season.

Rarely witnessed is the sensuous, and monogamous, courtship dance of the tiger salamander. . . .

The bad news is that the salamanders' trip to the spawning grounds has been increasingly frustrated because of road construction. For reasons not completely understood, 40 of 110 breeding spots documented on Long Island in 1984 are unproductive today because of development.

Because they live in water, air, and soil, Mr. Sabin said, salamanders, like other amphibians, are "good barometers," canaries in the proverbial coal mine, that signal, by dying, when their environment has been harmed.

No Friend Of Fish

"Habitat destruction is their biggest enemy," Mr. Sabin said. "I've noticed the Fowler's toad is in severe decline, and the southern leopard frog has almost disappeared. Tigers are secretive, we don't really know their numbers."

The blue-spotted salamander is extremely rare, he said. They are relegated to Montauk and Prince Edward Island, a Canadian Maritime Province. Mr. Sabin was off on newts next, noting that those found in Montauk had gill slits while newts found elsewhere on the East End did not. "Montauk is unusual, interesting, there is a type of saltwater water snake found in Oyster Pond, and of course the southern leopard frog was found there," he said.

Returning to the tigers at hand, Mr. Sabin said that, unlike other salamander species living in and around coastal ponds, the tigers were a woodland variety that bred in vernal pools - kettleholes in this area. The depressions catch the rain, or melting snow, but dry up come summer. This is important, the leader said, as salamanders fall prey to fish, and so don't share the same habitat with any success.

In Hot Pursuit

Salamanders are not lizards. They may look like them, but have the moist, thin skin of amphibians in place of the lizard's scales. Nor do they have claws or external ear openings as lizards do. In fact, they are deaf to all but low-frequency vibrations, and make no sound. They rely on smell and genetic ritual to pursue romance.

It was 8 o'clock and time for the group to pursue the salamanders pursuing each other. A five-minute drive ended beside an oak wood. A full moon lighted the sky behind the high, wind-driven clouds of a departing front.

The hunters wound along a narrow path that climbed to the crest of a hill. Mr. Sabin asked the group to wait while an advance party descended into the kettlehole beyond with lamps and nets to snare specimens. Too many lights could scare the creatures.

Lovers' Dance

The wait was short. Two females were netted. The word came and the party approached, kids in the lead. Look for egg masses, they were told. These were identifiable as a white gelatinous "snowball," said Nancy Jarman, whose job it is to keep tabs on salamanders for the State Department of Environmental Conservation.

Within minutes, she had a male tiger in a water-filled clear plastic box and a female in the beam of her light circling around the submerged branches of a fallen tree. The circling was typical, she said, prior to females' wrapping their tails around a twig to prepare for the laying of eggs.

Rarely witnessed is the sensuous, and monogamous, courtship dance of the tiger salamanders which ends when the male swims to the bottom to deposit spermatophores, packages of sperm. Later, the females take them into their bodies via the cloaca. In about 24 hours they find a twig to anchor them while producing a small mass of perhaps 50 eggs. The jelly absorbs pond water and expands.

Thirty days later the infant tigers hatch.

Into The Light

None was found on Saturday night, although Mr. Sabin said he was certain they were there. But he offered hope, saying the Natural History Society would offer further walks in the spring to see the salamander tadpoles.

In all, eight adult tigers were sighted on Saturday, with a ninth swimming into the light on its own as the kids prepared to return the four netted salamanders and one newt to the pond.

Visitors to the kettlehole departed in small groups praising the moon and their good fortune at finding the elusive amphibians. One 10-year-old drove the point home. "I held an endangered species in my hands," she said.