Nine-Year-Old Citizen Scientist
- jamesreddoch
- 5 days ago
- 2 min read
By James Reddoch
It was a rainy, 41-degree night in April along Hunts Corner Road — perfect conditions for a Big Night, the name given to the annual migration of slow-moving amphibians. On these nights, frogs and salamanders travel from their forest homes to pools, ditches, and ponds where they congregate in impressive numbers, court, and lay their eggs.
Third grader Kimball Burrill pulled on her muck boots, raincoat, headlamp, and reflective vest and, under the watchful eye of her mother, went out to count salamanders and frogs. Her goal? To monitor a stretch of road between her house and her grandparents’ driveway. “We are helping amphibians migrate,” she said. “We don’t want them to get squished.”
This was the first of three nights Kimball, a certified volunteer citizen-scientist with Maine Big Night, spent collecting data to help better understand amphibian populations and migration behavior.
Big Nights might see many thousands, even millions, of these small creatures on the move across the state, each headed back to the pool where it hatched. This is part of a cycle that many generations before them have traveled. They follow the same path back to where their life began — that is, assuming they can avoid the many dangers along the way.
“We saw an owl swoop down. It went into the trees by the road and down to the pond. Then it flew back out. We think it caught something,” Kimball said.
Of the many challenges amphibians face, one of the biggest is man-made. Imagine you are a small wood frog making the same journey that your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents — many generations before you — made, but now a two-lane road separates you from the pool you must reach to lay your eggs.
“Amphibians already face stronger threats than many other groups of wildlife…” reads the Maine Big Night website. Unfortunately, traffic can result in massive loss of life which can dramatically impact local populations. This is where Maine Big Night volunteers get to work. Their goal is to document dangerous crossings and help where they can.
The data Kimball submits helps determine if her site is designated as one warranting future monitoring to help improve migration success.
Kimball has also shared what she observed with her class at Crescent Park Elementary School in Bethel, Maine. “I went out three times. We found 22 wood frogs, 12 spring peepers, and two spotted salamanders and helped them get across the road. It’s not good to pick them up with dry or clean hands. It is better if they are wet and dirty from the water where we release them,” she explained.
Other students are excited about Maine Big Night and have gotten involved as well. Adults are welcome to help, too. Even though amphibian migration is over for this year, it is not too late to begin preparing for next season. Visit the Maine Big Night website and find out how you can become a volunteer. Then join Kimball and many other citizen scientists next April when frogs and salamanders will once again undertake their ancient journey from forest to pool.