January 26, 2021 - North side
January 26, 2021 (Tuesday), 9:00am - 11:15am
Coverage: (Note this is different) Los Gatos rowing club to second stop sign.
8 dead newts, 0 juveniles, 0 live newts.
Other roadkill: one millipede, one worm (I bet @merav logged the worm)
Weather: Chilly, around 50F, mostly sunny to start, with clouds moving in, as a storm system approaches (yay! but hopefully not too much all at once...)
Traffic: 16 cars; 3 bikes; 5 quarry trucks; 1 pedestrian (a very quiet day)
Merav and I started off together at Jones, flagging newts on the first mile of road between Jones and the Los Gatos rowing club for the how-many-are-disappearing experiment. She documented those newts and did the other half of the flagging, while I continued on to do the rest of the usual mid-week survey.
One interesting thing happened regarding the experiment. On my return trip, I checked the flagged newts to see if anything had changed already. I could not find one of the newts that Merav flagged (#16), just looking around the area I'd expect to find it. Looked further to find that it was on the other side and a bit down the road. It was a newt cracker, so easily blown around. While we were texting about how to handle such an event, a quarry truck came along and disappeared the newt, at least from the larger surrounding area I looked for it afterward. So right there may have happened the very thing we're studying.
I had postulated that not a large number of newts disappear, based on their toxicity and being ground into the pavement, such that we generally need to peel them off. But then there are, of course, other circumstances (like getting stuck to tires), along with those who go through enough of a dry phase to turn into crackers and can simply blow away, like this one.