Karstad Biodiversity Paintings: adventures in the colour of Canada

On Friday, February 19th, I was wading up to my knees in the main current downstream of the dam at Oxford Mills, counting Mudpuppies.  The count was 140 that night - 20 shy of our record!  I was training the big spotlight on the pinkly glowing sinuous shapes of giant feathery-gilled salamanders when I was startled by a phalanx of large, ghostly grey, linear shapes moving upstream toward me.

Attending the egg-laying of this amazing creature was a 'formative' experience for me.  Since I wrote this journal page (detail shown above - full page shown below), we have been launched into a survey of giant urban slugs - by the enthusiastic public response to an article in the Toronto Star .  I received over 30 e-mails about giant slug sightings from Burlington to Bowmanville, and ranging as widely as Rockwood and Wiarton.  There was even mention of them being seen in Sudbury, but the identity there is still in question. We made a map of localities at  http://www.doingnaturalhistory.com/?p=37 where people can post comments and watch the progress of the survey.