It was sad to hear the account of Curious George the Barred Owl eating a
Red-legged Frog. This species is already in decline with their habitat
rapidly dissappearing as it is bulldozed for roads, lawns, and excessively
large houses with 3 car garages, etc.. The California Red-legged Frog (Rana
aurora draytonii) is endangered in California. We used to have one of the
last 2 breeding populations of Red-legged Frogs in Seattle at Camp Long in
West Seattle, but I suspect the last one may have been seen a year and a
half ago and if it has somehow survived, may have no mate. (A year and a
half ago I saw one adult at the pond in June. As far as I know Red-legged
Frog spend most of their time in the forest and the adults normally don't
hang around ponds, except at breeding season. Though 2 or 3 years I saw
juvenile Red-legged Frogs at the pond in the summer (I think they may
disperse into the woods at the start of the rainy season), I had never seen
an adult at the pond before. Though I don't know if this is at all
probable, I imagined that this was the last adult of our population and had
been hanging out at the pond since the winter mating season still hoping for
a mate to appear. For the last 2 years or more we have had either one or
(or possibly 2?) breeding pairs of Barred Owls successfully raising 3 young
to adulthood. Four or five years ago we had no breeding Barred Owls at Camp
Long. The Barred Owls particularly like to perch and hunt at the pond's
edge (in the east they are described as a wetlland species) and at least
twice they have been seen catching Northwestern Salamanders (Ambystoma
gracile) there. (At Seward Park a favorite hunting area for the Barred Owls
there is the edge of Lake Washington at the NW corner of the park.) With so
many Barred Owls now (as most of you know, this species has been in the
Pacific Northwest less than 40 years, more or less, and has been rapidly
increasing), I don't think any remaining Red-leggeds at Camp Long have much
of a chance. I suspect the same will be true in much of the remaining
Red-legged Frog habitat where the frogs are struggling to survive and the
Barred Owls are now established or still increasing.

Though this is otherwise good news, on top of having more Barred Owl at
Camp Long last summer, a Great Blue Herron, quite fearless of people (it
would continue to hunt while noisy kids watched it from 15' away) started to
regularly hunt and eat Northwestern Salamanders and presmably Long-toed
Salamander (Ambystoma macrodactylum) larvae at the the pond there(named
"Polywog Pond" for the Bullfrogs that it was stocked with decades ago, but
are no longer around). Now we have a new Great Blue Heron nest at Camp Long
(they successfully raised 2 or 3 young this season) that may be the start of
a new Seattle area heron colony, yet may spell trouble for our pond breeding
amphibians..

Stewart Wechsler
Ecological Consulting
West Seattle
206 932-7225
ecostewart at quidnunc.net

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