LWC Podcast – Episode 13: Loudoun’s Spring Wetlands

For this episode of our podcast, we are joined by Mike Hayslett, expert herpetologist and vernal pools specialist. For the past 11 years, Mike has been joining Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy in an exploration of our spring wetlands and their inhabitants and has helped us learn about the really special wild places that Loudoun has to offer.

We’ve just completed a week long set of nature classes and workshops with Mike that took us from Ashburn to Leesburg to the Lost Corner of Lucketts and out to the Blue Ridge and in this interview Mike talks a bit about these interesting spots in nature. In the photo shown here, Mike and one of the participants of our Spring Pools Institute prepare to measure the length of one of the larger vernal pools we found in Ashburn.

If you’ve heard a lot of frogs calling in an area, or especially if you’ve come across a neat seasonal pool, please contact me, Nicole Hamilton, at nhamilton@loudounwildlife.org and we’ll see about checking it out. These pools can be large, like the one shown above, or as small as just a few feet in diameter.

For those interested in helping us identify and explore these great wetlands around Loudoun, you can contact me or check out our Loudoun Amphibian Monitoring Program. Large or small, we’re interested in finding more of these interesting wetlands across Loudoun and seeing which species are using them, and we could really use more volunteers around Loudoun helping with that. This is another great way to explore nature in Loudoun.