Shared by Gillian Duer - AmeriCorps Member, as Guest Blogger.

Sometimes rainy days in the park might not seem so fun, but when it rains, the park comes to life. Well, at least for the creatures who inhabit it. Check out this fun story from AmeriCorps member Gillian Duer from her experience at Belle Isle State Park.

On the night of June 10, a large storm rolled through the Northern Neck, depositing a lot of rain and flooding areas of the park. The next day, upon arriving at the park to start my service, I heard a chorus of croaking coming from all over the park; anywhere there was a pond of water, there was croaking. On top of that, there were toads all over the road. It was nearly impossible to avoid running over them in the car. My site supervisor and I ogled over how many there were and how cute they looked. Many pictures were taken.

Some Googling later, we found out that they were Eastern Spadefoot Toads. They have spade-like back feet to help them dig the burrows that they live in. We also found out that they mate 1-3 times a year and that their mating times are spurred by heavy rainfall (such as the heavy rainfall we received the night before).

The reason behind waiting for heavy rainfall is that the toads lay their eggs in temporary water sources, such as in ditches on the side of the road or large puddles of water. It was only a matter of time before we would start to see tadpoles in the many large puddles that had formed all over the park since that storm.

Sure enough, a couple of days later, the other interpreter I work with and I had found a dozen tadpoles in the drainage ditch near our office. Curious to watch them grow up, we gathered up a large temporary tank and set out to gather some plant, dirt, and pond water to keep our tadpole friends in. We found five tadpoles from two different puddles. Two were from the drainage ditch, and they were much larger than the tadpoles we found in the other puddle.

We placed everything in the tank and waited for the soil to settle so that way we could observe our new friends. The next day we looked eagerly at all the tadpoles we had found, in addition to the other little macroinvertebrates that had made the puddle their homes, such as some water fleas, mosquito larvae, and some kind of worms.

Over the next few weeks, we kept an eye on the tadpoles, adding rainwater we had collected to the tank when the water level got low and adding additional materials to the tank in preparation for the tadpoles to start growing legs. Our tadpoles grew bigger and bigger, and eventually, our two biggest tadpoles started growing back legs and now are forming front legs. Our three smallest ones have yet to grow any appendages, but we hope that they will soon.

At the end of the month, we started noticing an abundance of smaller-looking frogs hopping all over the park. Upon looking at them more closely, we realized that they were tiny Spadefoots! They were little toadlets, and some of them even still had nubs where their tails used to be. When we looked closely at our two largest tadpoles, we noticed that they were starting to resemble all the small toads we had seen hopping around outside. At that point, we knew it was only going to be a matter of time before our two biggest tadpoles weren't tadpoles anymore.

As a member of the AmeriCorps, Gillian gets to see these things on a first-hand basis. For more information on how you can be involved, click here. AmeriCorps members for years have been able to experience what happens in the park by getting hands-on experience and training. When you serve as an AmeriCorps member, every day is a new adventure waiting to be explored.