Spring peepers along Skyline

Drove up to Big Meadows for the evening and spent a quiet forty-five minutes in a roadside puddle listening to a deafening chorus of Spring Peepers. If you haven’t stood next to a Spring Peeper pond in March, I recommend it. The noise is physical.

I went in primarily to try some night exposures of the ponds with the stars coming up. You need a still water surface to catch a reflection and it was still enough. Skyline Drive is relatively dark, though there is glow from Charlottesville on one side and Harrisonburg on the other. Orion was setting as the peepers started.

I got one frame I really like — a long exposure of the pond with stars just coming through dusk. I also tried to get any peeper on camera and failed twice in the puddle and got one frame of a tree frog-sized shadow that I’m calling a peeper. For the record I was not shining a bright light at them; I used a dim red headlamp and retreated when they went quiet.

On the way out a Barred Owl called from somewhere below the road. I stood with the engine off and the window down for five minutes, no photo, and drove home with that at the top of the evening.