Snake Road:11-13 October 2013

We've been planning our fall trip to Snake Road since our trip there in the spring. This would be our third trip to the road in two years. The past two times we had missed the majority of the snakes moving, so we went a little earlier this year. We kept watching the weather and it was looking good.

For those who don't know, "Snake Road," as it is affectionately called by herpers, is a three mile stretch of road in southern Illinois that separates a swampy area from a 300 foot rocky cliff. The Illinois Department of Natural Resources closes the road twice a year. They close it from March 15 - May 15 to allow snakes to safely leave their hibernacula in the cliffs and move to the swamp and woods. They close it again from September 1 - October 31 to allow the snakes to move safely back to the cliff where they will spend the winter hibernating in dens in the rock. This makes this three mile stretch of road one of the most famous areas among herpers in the United States. In fact, of all the people that we met while there, we had driven the least amount; 4 hours. There people from Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Texas, Georgia and Canada.

Jenna and I both got off work at 11:00 a.m. I had the truck pretty much packed by the time she got home and we were on the road before noon. We were meeting Andy there. Due to the government shutdown, he was in DeSoto working since he was furloughed from his federal job. Andy got to the campground about 45 minutes before we did. I'm glad he did, because there was only one spot left with a fire area and picnic table. We got there and sat up our tents. It wasn't even 4:00 so we decided to go herping; I mean, that's why we were there, so why not?

A Sasquatch family welcomes to Grand Tower, IL

Our campsite on the Mississippi River

It was only about 10 minutes from our campground to Snake Road. We hadn't been on the road very long when Jenna spotted our first herp of the trip; and a lifer at that.

Bird-voiced Tree Frog (Hyla avivoca)

We walked for a while and caught up to three guys from Michigan with whom we walked for the next hour. Along the way we found several species.

Black Rat Snake (Pantherophis obsoleta)

Central Newt (Notophthalmus viridens louisianensis)

Western Ribbon Snake (Thamnophis proximus)

Yellow-bellied Watersnake (Nerodia erythrogaster flavigaster)

 The second ratsnake of the night finally gave me a chance to get a picture I've always want to try and get.

Black Rat Snake (Pantherophis obsoleta)

Black Rat Snake (Pantherophis obsoleta)

 It was getting pretty dark; dark enough that we were starting to use flashlights. The three of us just had tennis shoes and shorts on, so we were sticking to the road. One of the Michigan guys kept stepping off the road every now and then to look at the base of the cliff. We were all just kind of talking and halfway watching where we stepped when he yelled, "Rattlesnake!" We moved though the brush as quickly as we could while making sure we didn't step on one of the cottonmouths that are abundant in the area. At first all we could see was it's tail.

Timber Rattlesnake (Crotalus horridus)

 After a few seconds of staring, we saw where it's head was coming out of the rocks. What a beautiful lifer for both Jenna and I!!!! I've only been looking for this snake for 5 years.

Timber Rattlesnake (Crotalus horridus)

 Walking down the road on the way back, I saw something jump that looked different than the hundreds of cricket frogs and leopard frogs. Jenna had another lifer.

Green Tree Frog (Hyla cinerea)

We saw a few more species on the way back, but I only got a picture of a couple. In the 3 hours on the road that evening, we had 14 species of herps. I was feeling pretty good about our weekend already, and it was just starting.

Southern Leopard Frog (Lithobates sphenocephalus)

Smooth Earth Snake (Virginia valeriae)

 We started pretty early the next morning. It was pretty cool, so we resorted to flipping. Several Northern Slimy Salamanders were discovered; also a lifer.

Northern Slimy Salamander (Plethodon glutinosus)

Spotted Salamander (Ambystoma maculatum)

Long-tailed Salamander (Eurycea longicauda)

Long-tailed Salamander (Eurycea longicauda)

Western Cottonmouth (Agkistrodon piscivorus leucostoma)

Northern Red-bellied Snake (Storeria occipitomaculata occipitomaculata)

Andy had to meet Anna at the campsite at 10:00. It was thundering in the distance, so Jenna and I decided to head back to camp and put the canopy over our tent before the rain arrived. It wasn't supposed to rain until 4:00 p.m. We made it back to camp just as the sky let loose. We put the canopy over the tent and Anna got there, so we headed back to the road. The rain let up to just a little mist. We had no phone reception, so we had no view of the radar. We knew that once the rain stopped, it was supposed to be done. We decided to start from the South end of the road. A lot of people were just starting onto the road from that end. We had made it a couple hundred yards when it started to POUR. We were quickly soaked and continued on. I made a quick trip back to the truck to drop my camera off, because the rain was starting to soak through my water resistant camera bag. The rain brought the salamanders out in droves, and of course I didn't have my camera. That's OK. It was actually kind of nice to walk without the extra weight and just enjoy finding things. I did manage to get a few salamander pictures after the rain let up that afternoon. Here's one of the only pictures I got of a Cave Salamander; a species that we saw probably over 30 of while it was raining.

Cave Salamander (Eurycea lucifuga)

 Not very long after taking the picture above, Jenna called that she had a copperhead in the cliff. It wasn't the best view, but it was the final piece in our VENOMOUS TRIFECTA! We now had Timber Rattlesnake, Western Cottonmouth, and this copperhead, whatever subspecies it may be. Those are the only three species of venomous snake that are found in the area.

Copperhead subspecies (Agkistrodon contortrix)

That night, we built a nice fire from the pine wood that dad and I cut out of Grandma's yard a couple weeks before. I've determined that a campfire from pine wood is the best. It smells good, burns good (almost too good if you want a long lasting fire), and pops and crackles beautifully.

Some sort of cool looking plant I haven't tried to identify

 Sunday morning we went back to the road for a while. Jenna and I split off after a while and planned on going into south Missouri to look for hognose snakes. On the way out, we met a group of Canadians that we chatted with for a bit. They had just come from a place called Heron Pond. It sounded pretty awesome and they gave us directions, so we decided to go there instead. I'm glad we did as we ended up with four lifers there. One of them was a River Cooter. I'm sure I've seen them before, but hadn't ever really took the time to ID one. After only about 15 minutes we flipped another lifer.

Mole Salamander (Ambystoma talpoideum)

Mole Salamander (Ambystoma talpoideum)

Mole Salamander (Ambystoma talpoideum)

Jenna loving the Mole Salamander

 Five more minutes passed and we flipped lifer number three for the area.

Jenna with a Marbled Salamander

My favorite herp of the trip:

Marbled Salamander (Ambystoma opacum)

Marbled Salamander (Ambystoma opacum)

Spider spp.

Jenna holding a large L. styraciflua leaf

Another mole flipped...

Mole Salamander (Ambystoma talpoideum)

 Right next to this smallmouth.

Smallmouth Salamander (Ambystoma texanum)

 Lifer number four was discovered by Jenna after I almost stepped on it.

Jenna holding our lifer Eastern Ribbon Snake

Eastern Ribbon Snake (Thamnophis sauritus)

 I absolutely loved Heron Pond and plan to go back someday.

Ground Skink (Scincella lateralis)

 Since we had to drive back by within fives miles of Snake Road, we thought maybe we would give it another quick go. Boy am I glad we did. On the road just before the parking lot we got another treat!

Timber Rattlesnake (Crotalus horridus)

Timber Rattlesnake (Crotalus horridus)

 Cottonmouths were out in force on Sunday.

Western Cottonmouth (Agkistrodon piscivorus leucostoma)

 As was this little brown snake. It was the most aggressive snake of the trip, biting and striking like crazy when Jenna tried to stop it from escaping the road.

Midland Brownsnake (Storeria dekayi wrightorum)

 Our last snake of the trip was by far the most abundant of the trip...

Western Cottonmouth (Agkistrodon piscivorus leucostoma)

All in all, it was a fantastic weekend. In fact, it was probably the best weekend of field herping that I've ever had. We ended up with 34 species of herps in just over 48 hours. Jenna got 8 life species and I ended up with 7. I'm ready to go back!

08 October 2013

It's finally fall; by far my favorite time of the year. Part of that is because summer is my least favorite season and now I have 9 more months until it's summer again! Summer really isn't good for much outdoors except fishing and even that is miserable if it's too hot. Fall brings cool evenings, football, migrating birds, and herps. Herps will be the theme of this post.

On Friday, the 27th of September we took an evening walk with Andy and his dog Buck on the Katy Trail. We were hoping to see some snakes, but we found nothing. Saturday morning, Jenna and I decided to head to some conservation areas in Warren and Montgomery counties. It was a cool morning, but really humid as a front was coming in. We still expected to find some critters at our favorite herping spots. I carried my camera backpack around all morning at the first stop, and never took the camera out. We had seven species of herps at our first stop including my lifer Broad-headed Skink. She slipped away before I could grab her.

Northern Cricket Frog - Acris crepitans
Southern Leopard Frog - Lithobates sphenocephalus
Spring Peeper - Pseudacris crucifer
Ground Skink - Scincella lateralis
Broad-headed Skink - Eumeces laticeps
Five-lined Skink - Eumeces fasciatus
Prairie Lizard - Sceloporus consobrinus

Ground Skink

We got back to the car and discovered we had quite a few tiny seed ticks. We picked them off the best we could and checked the radar. It looked like we had a couple hours left of dry weather. The temperature was now into the upper 70s which is plenty warm for me. We made a mad dash for Warren County. We've heard this is a good spot for Marbled Salamanders and we'd found Ringed Salamanders here before. We got there and started checking around some ponds. I decided to not carry my camera because I was tired, didn't expect to see anything, and was still thinking about the ticks. So the pictures really aren
t that great in this post. The ponds were already full of water, so I guess we had already missed the Marbled Salamanders since they lay their eggs in the dry and wait for the water to come up to them. We finally did find a bunch of salamander eggs under some logs in the water that we assumed were marbled. No luck on any salamanders the entire day. Bummer.

We decided to try one more stop on our way out to a spot we knew there was a pond. Of course the pond was full and there were no salamanders, but the stop was well worth the time. Only about 20 yards from the car, I spotted a racer. Jenna and I worked together to catch the snake that tried very hard to elude us. We finally got him.

Jenna holding her first racer

Eastern Yellow-bellied Racer

After putting the snake down, we walked another 20 yards when Jenna spotted the find of the day.

Western Slender Glass Lizard

Me holding the glass lizard

Jenna holding the Glass Lizard

We were now up to nine species of herps for the day. As we got back to the car after the last walk, we noticed significantly more seed ticks. These things were so small that you couldn't see them if they weren't moving. We again picked them off the best we could and headed home. It started raining almost immediately. As we were driving home, I kept noticing more and more ticks on my arm. Every time I put my arms on my legs I was picking off another 30-40 ticks. I looked closer and sure enough...hundreds, if not thousands of ticks were crawling all over my pants, shirt, and the car seat. I looked at Jenna as she was driving and she was the same way. We stopped in the rain and put on some different clothes and tried to get the ticks off the seats as much as possible. I spent the hour drive home picking ticks off myself and Jenna. We were finding ticks for the next few days.

After the rain on Saturday, Jenna's brother Matt wanted to go look for salamanders. I had a pretty good feeling about the night. We found an Eastern Newt, several Smallmouth Salamanders, American Toads, a Fowler's Toad, a Boreal Chorus Frog, American Bullfrogs some more cricket frogs, and some more leopard frogs. Fifteen species for the day.

Central Newt

Matt holding the newt

Smallmouth Salamander

American Toad

Sunday morning was kind of a lazy day for us. I woke early as usual and let Jenna sleep. I decided to make a run to Panera to get some breakfast while she was still asleep. Of course, they weren't open yet and she woke up while I waited on them to open. So much for that surprise. We decided to herp and asked Andy to join us. He was busy until early afternoon, so we cleaned out the fish tank.

Andy got there a little before 1:00 and we headed for Callaway County. It was beautiful outside after the front passed the day before. We decided that even if we didn't find anything, we were still glad to be outdoors. We flipped a few logs and didn't find much. Andy went to flip a log and struggled because it was stuck in the ground. As he was working on getting the log up, he noticed a small snake sunning itself on that log. It's a good thing it was cool out so the snake was lethargic enough to stay there. Here is the first snake of the day.

Western Smooth Earth Snake

It was like that snake turned our luck around. A little ways farther we stopped to look at an American Toad and Andy spotted an Eastern Box Turtle off in the bushes. A little ways farther down the trail I went to reach for a small log when I saw something move in the leaves. I grabbed a whole handful and leaves and was lucky enough to pull this guy out.

Eastern Box Turtle

Northern Red-bellied Snake

We saw several frogs, and then decided to go back to Three Creeks Conservation Area. It didn't take Jenna long to turn up this beautiful, but uncooperative little Ring-necked Snake.

Prairie Ring-necked Snake

We looked for a while longer when Andy said a log looked really promising. I made the comment that this sure looked like good Copperhead habitat and continued on my way down the hill. A few seconds later Jenna and I were coming back up the hill for the Copperhead under Andy's promising log.

Osage Copperhead

That was pretty much it for that weekend, but I was happy with how it had turned out...minus the ticks.

This past weekend I went to Macon to see my folks. Friday I spent some time in the garage with dad working on the Nova.

Saturday morning found me awake a little before 5:00. I credit this to Jenna making me get up and work out every morning before 4:30. It's been tough to do, but I feel so much better. Now I can't sleep in at all. Anyway, I decided to take a ride around the country roads. The temperature at 5:30 was still 70 degrees. I saw a few Leopard Frogs, a rabbit, and only one deer. I was hoping for a Bobcat since this is the area I have seen several in before. One time I came around a corner and saw three young ones frolicking in the road. They looked at me for a minute before bounding off into the bushes. No such luck this morning. I got home a little after sunrise. I took a ride around the farm in the afternoon and only found a few more frogs and several birds. We took a couple rides around the lakes and around some country roads that day hoping for some snakes to be out sunning on the road, but we didn't see any. I have to believe that the low 60s was too cold for them.

Dad and I cut some trees and dad bushes out of my Grandmas yard on Sunday.

Dad getting ready to unload limbs

I got to keep the wood from the trees, which will be used for our campfire this coming weekend at Snake Road. Stay tuned!