Notes About Nature

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!