The Homewood Star Volume 4 | Issue 10 | January 2015
neighborly news & entertainment for Homewood
A look ahead
On a warm winter night, spotted salamanders will travel out of Homewood Forest Preserve to mate in vernal pools along South Lakeshore Drive.
Find updates on a new phase of the Shades Creek Greenway and other city projects in our 2015 Year in Preview.
See page A8
Running for Bell Center kids
Great migration Festival celebrates annual salamander migration near Homewood High School By MADOLINE MARKHAM The dance begins sometime after Christmas each year. Jet-black creatures with bright orange and yellow spots emerge from the Homewood Forest Preserve behind the high school and scurry to a vernal pool nearby. Once they arrive, they jump into the water and perform their mating dance, flipping over and surfacing for air. Viewed from the side, they always appear to smile. “It’s like magic,” Jim Brown tells people.
He would know. The Samford University history professor has been watching them for 30 years. The spotted salamanders mate in water but live most of the year underground in the preserve’s hillside. Their skin must stay moist, so they choose a warm, rainy night after it’s been cold to migrate. “We think about birds migrating north or south, but there are also a lot of migrations on a smaller scale,” said Kristin Bakkegard, a biology professor at Samford. “It is about the only time you will see the salamander.
Once you get to know them, they are very charismatic animals.” A decade ago, Brown told members of the Friends of Shades Creek about the migration, and in the years since, the event has developed a following. Brown and Friends president Michelle Blackwood go out on nights when the conditions are right and watch for salamanders to emerge. When they see them, they start calling a list of 25 people. Sometimes it’s midnight, sometimes it’s 3 a.m. But
See SALAMANDERS | page A18
Students are teaming up on Patriot Partners relay teams to raise funds. Read more about their efforts inside.
See page B1
INSIDE Sponsors ...................A2 City .............................A4 Business ....................A6 Community ...............A12 School House ...........B2 Sports .......................B7 Calendar ................. B14 Opinion .................... B15
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Midday bus service could be cut By SYDNEY CROMWELL When his lease is up, Ward Dudley will leave his Asten Circle home and relocate to Hoover. He said he has loved living in Homewood, but with the end of full Birmingham-Jefferson County Transit Authority (BJCTA) bus services approaching, Dudley and his guide dog will soon be unable to travel at will. Dudley said he rides the BJCTA paratransit buses at least two or three times a week to run errands and go to the doctor’s office. On Jan. 31, however, the transit authority will reduce operations for Homewood’s Routes 39 and 42 to peak hours only. For those two routes, the MAX buses will soon stop running between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. While Route 14 will remain unaffected, the estimated 282 daily riders of 39 and 42 will only be able to catch the bus between approximately 6:15 to 10 a.m. and 3 to 7:20 p.m. BJCTA
See BUSES | page A19
A BJCTA bus on Homewood Route 39 travels Lakeshore Parkway in the middle of the day. If proposed cuts to the service are approved, this route will no longer run between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. Photo by Sydney Cromwell.