We had a lot of rain today, interspersed with long rumbles of thunder, and when it was all over in the late afternoon, the gauge held in excess of two inches of precipitation. There was a strong but short-lived chorus of peepers at dusk, and these coerced me to put on my waders and see who else amphibian might be out. According to natural history lore, most of the amphib breeding is over in a couple of nights, and we certainly shouldn't be seeing such early "birds" as Wood Frogs and Spotted Salamander. But that lore, I learned a couple of decades ago and stopped repeating as gospel, isn't really correct. Breeding comes in several waves, and from the shimmering looks of things along the vernal bottom, there might be a small, tail-end bout of salamander mating later tonight. There were several Spotteds on the prowl, and I don't think they were out simply for a nighttime stroll.