Yellow-spotted salamanders are carnivores. They eat mostly insects like crickets, beetles, grubs, worms, and slugs. They are not overly picky, though, if it lives underground and they can get it in their mouth, they'll eat it!
Yellow-spotted salamanders can live as long as 20 years. They undergo a lot of changes in their first few months, hatching from an egg, then being a tiny salamander larva with gills, then quickly growing lungs and getting big enough to head up on land where they'll spend most of the rest of their lives [...]
Sometimes water looks blueish green because there are tiny plants called algae living in the water. These microscopic plants are bluish green in color and when there are millions of them in the water the whole lake or pond will turn that color. Other times the water looks that color because of how the light is hitting [...]
Toads have freckles and look the way they do because they are experts at camouflage. Toads are the same color as the forest floor, this means that they are camouflaged or that they can blend in with it. Next time you are hiking keep an eye out for toads, you probably won't see them until [...]
The foam that you saw on Skaneateles Lake is naturally occuring. It is caused by a mix of decomposing organic material such as algae and air. When organic matter decomposes, it releases compounds. In the water, these compounds rise to the surface (surfactants) and reduce surface tension. Wind blowing across the lake disturbs these surfactants [...]
Bark on a tree is like armor. It keeps things like bugs, bad weather, diseases, fungus, and even people from hurting the tree. However, if something does get through the bark the tree can grow new bark around the wound, like a band aid. This band aid is called a burl. That is one reason [...]
White tail deer have a white tail to warn other deer if a predator is nearby. When deer think that a predator is close they make a snorting sound with their nose, as they run away they wave their tails kind of like a flag. When the other deer see it they know to run [...]
The small orange-red disks you found were definitely a type of fungus or mushroom. From how you described them and what time of year it is I think that they are scarlet cup fungus.
The purple/maroon spikes you saw coming up out of the ground is skunk cabbage. This funny looking plant sprouts out of the ground in very early spring when there is usually still snow on the ground. Skunk cabbage is actually very cool because it makes its own heat that melts the snow around it! This [...]
Some rocks are green because they have stuff called lichen growing on them. Lichen is green like a plant but grows and sometimes looks like fungus or mushrooms. This is because lichen is actually a plant called algae and a fungus living together. The fungus gives the algae a safe place to live and water [...]