October 2022-early May 2023 Herping
Posted: November 4th, 2023, 2:49 pm
In October and November 2022, I got a few nice opportunities to do some light herping with family, with the first instance a short outing to a series of caves and springs in urban surroundings just across the border into Northwest Arkansas, where I can usually find at least two of the three of Cave, Dark-sided, and Western Slimy without a problem whenever I just want to see a salamander or introduce someone with no experience to very light, low-intensity herping. The newly-described Southern Grotto Salamander (Eurycea braggi) is rumored to also be in some of these springs if you get lucky. On a crisp, sunny, 70 degree mid-October day, I got out for my first herping since the 2022 Arizona trip and saw a couple Cave and Western Slimy Salamanders:
Cave Salamander, Northwest Arkansas
My mom, visiting my property for an extended stay from Michigan, had also never seen a Ringed Salamander, which is one of the more eye-catching and attractive Ambystoma in North America, which is my mom’s favorite genus (probably due to the nostalgia value of seeing Spotted and Blue-spotted Salamanders with my brother and I when we were kids in Michigan), and I know of a never-fail road cruising spot for them less than an hour from my front doorstep, near the Arkansas border. Every time I have been there between Oct. 15 and early November in rainy conditions, I have seen Ringed Salamanders easily. So, with the rain coming down in sheets on October 24th, my mom and I left from my tutoring session that night straight for the road-cruising spot. We weren’t disappointed. In barely an hour, we saw 21 Ringed Salamanders—the population here is so dense that on two occasions, as we were photographing one individual, my mom spotted another one with the flashlight less than 10 yards up the road, and on one of these occasions, there were FOUR within 20 yards of each other! I didn’t go see the migration in 2023, as I’ve now seen Ringed four or five times and it’s only really fun when with someone who hasn’t seen them before, but it’s always a treat to see, and portends the coming onset of winter, the end of early fall. See the YT video below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTo1Toy4ixk
Ringed Salamanders, Southwest Missouri
Later in November and in early December, there was no particular herping of note, although I did re-visit the same caves and springs in Arkansas from the mid-October day trip a few times, both with family over Thanksgiving and with a family from church whose son had wanted to see a salamander for a long while, and the results were more slimies, a Pickerel Frog on an uncharacteristically cold night at the entrance to a cave, and some more Eurycea
Dark-sided Salamander, Northwest Arkansas
As 2022 lapsed into 2023, I took an MLK weekend trip to a friend’s house in Nashville, sampling some of the best Mexican, Japanese, and assorted Latin American food I’ve ever had, singing karaoke, and playing board games. But we also found time to go out for a decent hike of maybe 4-5 miles in Radnor Lake State Park on the southern outskirts of town on a balmy 45-degree day. I turned a few logs as we went, and saw my first metro Nashville herp, and 2023’s first herp: a Northern Zigzag Salamander.
Northern Zigzag Salamander, Davidson County, TN
The rest of January through mid-March found me studying for a professional examination, and though I did cruise for Tiger Salamanders once or twice in February to get studying breaks, the efforts were half-hearted “I’ll give it forty-minutes and go back home” cruises, and I didn’t see anything other than some early-bird cricket frogs. After my exam, I began planning to see my last Midwestern Ambystoma: the Silvery Salamander.
Most authorities now lump in the Silvery with the “Unisexual Ambsyoma,” the hodge-podge of ‘mander mutts across the Lower Midwest that are cross-breeds between Jefferson and Blue-spotted Salamanders, while Smallmouth or Eastern Tiger Salamander genes are mixed in for some unique populations, like those on Kelley’s Island, Ohio. But being old-school, I still recognize the Unisexual Ambystoma as three species: the Kelley’s Island, the Tremblay’s (more like Blue-spot than Jefferson), and Silvery (more like Jefferson than Blue-spot).
Luckily, the weather forecast turned favorable for the first weekend in April, with warm, winter-breaking thunderstorms projected across Illinois and Indiana, where I would meet my parents half-way, on a Friday night, where I could reach in time to road cruise if I took a half-day off and then spend Saturday looking before driving back home. The whole drive from Southwest Missouri, I was out-running storm clouds forming along the I-44 and I-55 corridors, and while driving through metro St. Louis and into the corn desert of south-central Illinois, the classic country was occasionally interrupted with severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings for the counties 60-90 miles to my west (I would have been further ahead of the weather but for stopping at a Freddy’s for burgers—the longest wait for fast food I have ever experienced).
Driving east across America’s agricultural heart, the corn and soy not yet planted and last year’s stubble still dotting the fields, it was still 75 degrees when I stopped just outside Champaign to look for turtles along the Sangamon River (the same one Abraham Lincoln lobbied Congress to dredge so farmers could get their produce to the Mississippi and to world markets as a young politician, more than 20 years before the Civil War) and nearly slipped down a mud bank into the swift-flowing river, brown from soil runoff upstream.
As the sun set and the storms approached from the west, I took shelter at a Panera Bread to wait out the storm and wait for my parents to arrive, and watched as blue-black storm clouds gradually made their way closer and closer, the wind picking up from a breeze to a howl and then a gale, and the denizens of Panera looking anxiously at their phones for doppler radar and warnings. Interesting social note: even among people who rely on their phones for everything (this Panera was in Champaign, and most customers were obviously University of Illinois students), the raw power of nature still commands our attention. Once the storm arrived and the wind started howling, folks were looking out of windows, not at their phones. In Indiana, my parents narrowly avoided a tornado that passed just south of I-74 between Indianapolis and the Illinois border. Needless to say, when we met an hour later outside of Danville, IL, we were glad nothing had happened to either one of us. An initial road cruise that night through likely habitat didn’t turn up any salamanders, but the next morning would be a different story.
In the frigid 45-degree morning air (the thunderstorm had brought with it a massive cold front), we hit a spot near the border between Indiana and Illinois rumored to have both my target and some other favorite Ambystoma like Spotted and Smallmouth. Indeed, about an hour of hiking and searching finally turned up several salamanders in quick succession: nine Eastern Red-backs, a Smallmouth, and my lifer Silvery Salamander. This represented my first lifer salamander since May 2022, my last Ambystoma east of the Great Plains (except the Flatwoods Salamanders in Florida), and my first lifer in the state of Illinois.
Smallmouth Salamander, near Illinois/Indiana border
Silvery Salamander, near Illinois/Indiana border
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWWuj7-TCFE&t=7s
We drove back to MO, had some BBQ on the way, reminisced, and hung out on my property before spring break ended and my parents had to get back North. The next few weeks were herpetologically active as the warmth returned to the Ozarks and I found myself on assignment in Eastern Kansas, where I discovered a new glade that is highly productive for Ringnecks and Milksnakes while searching in vain for an early-season Racer (I have seen plenty of racers but have yet to get a good picture of the Eastern Yellow-bellied, as I always seem to road-cruise them and can never get my seat-belt off, park the car, and sprint up to the snake in time before it’s in the deep prairie grass). Eastern KS in April is a gorgeous (and fragrant) place if you know where you’re going, and has some even prettier snakes:
Central Plains Milksnakes, Eastern Kansas
Prairie Ringneck Snake, Eastern Kansas
Unfortunately, I only had my work phone while at my new Kansas spot (not so next April!!), otherwise I could have gotten much better photos of these milks that did justice to their vibrance and produced a short YT video. In mid-April, a dear friend from college who lives in Washington, DC came to visit; the first time we had seen each other in person since before the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a complete blast, replete with Civil War battlefield visits, bonfires at my house, restaurants, joint workouts, visits to the Bass Pro headquarters and Wonders of Wildlife Aquarium in Springfield, and mini-golf and some very light glade herping near Branson that only turned up some common skink species and a prairie lizard or two. But after dropping my friend off at the St. Louis airport the next week, I had one of the most seren-DIP-itous experiences of my field herping career. Seeing as I was already several hours east of home to drop off my friend in STL, I figured I would head south into the swamps of Southern Illinois to try for a Western Lesser Siren and then go home on US 60 through southern MO rather than Interstate 44. I pulled into the parking lot of a small conservation area under cloudy and foreboding skies, with distant thunder rumbling from severe storms about an hour off in Southeast Missouri. Just as I went to put on my snake guards and get the dipnet out of the car, I saw a man and several kids with dipnets in a small pond across the pond near a road. I had to ask.
“Hey, do you mind if I ask what you’re doing?” I shouted across the street.
“We’re looking for critters, what are you doing?” he said back.
“You might think this sounds silly, but I am looking for Lesser Sirens,” I said.
The man burst out laughing until I thought he’d keel over.
“Well, this pond is full of them, want to come over and see some?”
Didn’t have to tell me twice.
It turns out this gentleman is a local biology professor, and documents the herp and other life on his property extensively, setting out coverboards and managing his land for herps. He gave me a tour of his property and kindly invited me to dinner with them in town before we went dipnetting, although I did have to get back home and wanted to beat the storms back to the interstate, so kindly gave him a rain check next time I am in Southern Illinois. Surrounded by the professor’s dogs, I found a Lesser Siren in about four swipes of the dipnet and photographed it in a tub, where one of the dogs nearly stepped on the specimen. What a way to score a siren!
Western Lesser Siren, extreme Southern Illinois
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T67ZvwmFsHE&t=2s
Although I have seen only a juvenile Greater Siren, I now had seen every US siren except the Reticulated in Florida.
The rest of April and early May saw me try and miss at a Southern Grotto Salamander just across the border in Arkansas and see some cool late spring snakes and turtles over two weeks at a small conservation area just up the road from a two-week work assignment in central Missouri, including my first Prairie Kingsnake since 2021. Again, I only had my work phone for these finds:
Three-toed Box Turtle, Laclede County, MO
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Prairie Kingsnake, Laclede County, MO
So ended the opening to 2023, with the transition from mid-spring to late spring/early summer well underway, and my herping focus turned to an epic upcoming trip in mid-May with my brother, in celebration of his completing his first year of college with all As second semester (in an engineering program-much harder than the lowly economics degree I obtained). That post will be forthcoming, titled “the Mega-May Trip 2023,” and will probably take some time to write adequately, so I may post non-chronological accounts of herping after that before I get around to that trip.
Cave Salamander, Northwest Arkansas
My mom, visiting my property for an extended stay from Michigan, had also never seen a Ringed Salamander, which is one of the more eye-catching and attractive Ambystoma in North America, which is my mom’s favorite genus (probably due to the nostalgia value of seeing Spotted and Blue-spotted Salamanders with my brother and I when we were kids in Michigan), and I know of a never-fail road cruising spot for them less than an hour from my front doorstep, near the Arkansas border. Every time I have been there between Oct. 15 and early November in rainy conditions, I have seen Ringed Salamanders easily. So, with the rain coming down in sheets on October 24th, my mom and I left from my tutoring session that night straight for the road-cruising spot. We weren’t disappointed. In barely an hour, we saw 21 Ringed Salamanders—the population here is so dense that on two occasions, as we were photographing one individual, my mom spotted another one with the flashlight less than 10 yards up the road, and on one of these occasions, there were FOUR within 20 yards of each other! I didn’t go see the migration in 2023, as I’ve now seen Ringed four or five times and it’s only really fun when with someone who hasn’t seen them before, but it’s always a treat to see, and portends the coming onset of winter, the end of early fall. See the YT video below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTo1Toy4ixk
Ringed Salamanders, Southwest Missouri
Later in November and in early December, there was no particular herping of note, although I did re-visit the same caves and springs in Arkansas from the mid-October day trip a few times, both with family over Thanksgiving and with a family from church whose son had wanted to see a salamander for a long while, and the results were more slimies, a Pickerel Frog on an uncharacteristically cold night at the entrance to a cave, and some more Eurycea
Dark-sided Salamander, Northwest Arkansas
As 2022 lapsed into 2023, I took an MLK weekend trip to a friend’s house in Nashville, sampling some of the best Mexican, Japanese, and assorted Latin American food I’ve ever had, singing karaoke, and playing board games. But we also found time to go out for a decent hike of maybe 4-5 miles in Radnor Lake State Park on the southern outskirts of town on a balmy 45-degree day. I turned a few logs as we went, and saw my first metro Nashville herp, and 2023’s first herp: a Northern Zigzag Salamander.
Northern Zigzag Salamander, Davidson County, TN
The rest of January through mid-March found me studying for a professional examination, and though I did cruise for Tiger Salamanders once or twice in February to get studying breaks, the efforts were half-hearted “I’ll give it forty-minutes and go back home” cruises, and I didn’t see anything other than some early-bird cricket frogs. After my exam, I began planning to see my last Midwestern Ambystoma: the Silvery Salamander.
Most authorities now lump in the Silvery with the “Unisexual Ambsyoma,” the hodge-podge of ‘mander mutts across the Lower Midwest that are cross-breeds between Jefferson and Blue-spotted Salamanders, while Smallmouth or Eastern Tiger Salamander genes are mixed in for some unique populations, like those on Kelley’s Island, Ohio. But being old-school, I still recognize the Unisexual Ambystoma as three species: the Kelley’s Island, the Tremblay’s (more like Blue-spot than Jefferson), and Silvery (more like Jefferson than Blue-spot).
Luckily, the weather forecast turned favorable for the first weekend in April, with warm, winter-breaking thunderstorms projected across Illinois and Indiana, where I would meet my parents half-way, on a Friday night, where I could reach in time to road cruise if I took a half-day off and then spend Saturday looking before driving back home. The whole drive from Southwest Missouri, I was out-running storm clouds forming along the I-44 and I-55 corridors, and while driving through metro St. Louis and into the corn desert of south-central Illinois, the classic country was occasionally interrupted with severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings for the counties 60-90 miles to my west (I would have been further ahead of the weather but for stopping at a Freddy’s for burgers—the longest wait for fast food I have ever experienced).
Driving east across America’s agricultural heart, the corn and soy not yet planted and last year’s stubble still dotting the fields, it was still 75 degrees when I stopped just outside Champaign to look for turtles along the Sangamon River (the same one Abraham Lincoln lobbied Congress to dredge so farmers could get their produce to the Mississippi and to world markets as a young politician, more than 20 years before the Civil War) and nearly slipped down a mud bank into the swift-flowing river, brown from soil runoff upstream.
As the sun set and the storms approached from the west, I took shelter at a Panera Bread to wait out the storm and wait for my parents to arrive, and watched as blue-black storm clouds gradually made their way closer and closer, the wind picking up from a breeze to a howl and then a gale, and the denizens of Panera looking anxiously at their phones for doppler radar and warnings. Interesting social note: even among people who rely on their phones for everything (this Panera was in Champaign, and most customers were obviously University of Illinois students), the raw power of nature still commands our attention. Once the storm arrived and the wind started howling, folks were looking out of windows, not at their phones. In Indiana, my parents narrowly avoided a tornado that passed just south of I-74 between Indianapolis and the Illinois border. Needless to say, when we met an hour later outside of Danville, IL, we were glad nothing had happened to either one of us. An initial road cruise that night through likely habitat didn’t turn up any salamanders, but the next morning would be a different story.
In the frigid 45-degree morning air (the thunderstorm had brought with it a massive cold front), we hit a spot near the border between Indiana and Illinois rumored to have both my target and some other favorite Ambystoma like Spotted and Smallmouth. Indeed, about an hour of hiking and searching finally turned up several salamanders in quick succession: nine Eastern Red-backs, a Smallmouth, and my lifer Silvery Salamander. This represented my first lifer salamander since May 2022, my last Ambystoma east of the Great Plains (except the Flatwoods Salamanders in Florida), and my first lifer in the state of Illinois.
Smallmouth Salamander, near Illinois/Indiana border
Silvery Salamander, near Illinois/Indiana border
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWWuj7-TCFE&t=7s
We drove back to MO, had some BBQ on the way, reminisced, and hung out on my property before spring break ended and my parents had to get back North. The next few weeks were herpetologically active as the warmth returned to the Ozarks and I found myself on assignment in Eastern Kansas, where I discovered a new glade that is highly productive for Ringnecks and Milksnakes while searching in vain for an early-season Racer (I have seen plenty of racers but have yet to get a good picture of the Eastern Yellow-bellied, as I always seem to road-cruise them and can never get my seat-belt off, park the car, and sprint up to the snake in time before it’s in the deep prairie grass). Eastern KS in April is a gorgeous (and fragrant) place if you know where you’re going, and has some even prettier snakes:
Central Plains Milksnakes, Eastern Kansas
Prairie Ringneck Snake, Eastern Kansas
Unfortunately, I only had my work phone while at my new Kansas spot (not so next April!!), otherwise I could have gotten much better photos of these milks that did justice to their vibrance and produced a short YT video. In mid-April, a dear friend from college who lives in Washington, DC came to visit; the first time we had seen each other in person since before the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a complete blast, replete with Civil War battlefield visits, bonfires at my house, restaurants, joint workouts, visits to the Bass Pro headquarters and Wonders of Wildlife Aquarium in Springfield, and mini-golf and some very light glade herping near Branson that only turned up some common skink species and a prairie lizard or two. But after dropping my friend off at the St. Louis airport the next week, I had one of the most seren-DIP-itous experiences of my field herping career. Seeing as I was already several hours east of home to drop off my friend in STL, I figured I would head south into the swamps of Southern Illinois to try for a Western Lesser Siren and then go home on US 60 through southern MO rather than Interstate 44. I pulled into the parking lot of a small conservation area under cloudy and foreboding skies, with distant thunder rumbling from severe storms about an hour off in Southeast Missouri. Just as I went to put on my snake guards and get the dipnet out of the car, I saw a man and several kids with dipnets in a small pond across the pond near a road. I had to ask.
“Hey, do you mind if I ask what you’re doing?” I shouted across the street.
“We’re looking for critters, what are you doing?” he said back.
“You might think this sounds silly, but I am looking for Lesser Sirens,” I said.
The man burst out laughing until I thought he’d keel over.
“Well, this pond is full of them, want to come over and see some?”
Didn’t have to tell me twice.
It turns out this gentleman is a local biology professor, and documents the herp and other life on his property extensively, setting out coverboards and managing his land for herps. He gave me a tour of his property and kindly invited me to dinner with them in town before we went dipnetting, although I did have to get back home and wanted to beat the storms back to the interstate, so kindly gave him a rain check next time I am in Southern Illinois. Surrounded by the professor’s dogs, I found a Lesser Siren in about four swipes of the dipnet and photographed it in a tub, where one of the dogs nearly stepped on the specimen. What a way to score a siren!
Western Lesser Siren, extreme Southern Illinois
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T67ZvwmFsHE&t=2s
Although I have seen only a juvenile Greater Siren, I now had seen every US siren except the Reticulated in Florida.
The rest of April and early May saw me try and miss at a Southern Grotto Salamander just across the border in Arkansas and see some cool late spring snakes and turtles over two weeks at a small conservation area just up the road from a two-week work assignment in central Missouri, including my first Prairie Kingsnake since 2021. Again, I only had my work phone for these finds:
Three-toed Box Turtle, Laclede County, MO
Prairie Kingsnake, Laclede County, MO
So ended the opening to 2023, with the transition from mid-spring to late spring/early summer well underway, and my herping focus turned to an epic upcoming trip in mid-May with my brother, in celebration of his completing his first year of college with all As second semester (in an engineering program-much harder than the lowly economics degree I obtained). That post will be forthcoming, titled “the Mega-May Trip 2023,” and will probably take some time to write adequately, so I may post non-chronological accounts of herping after that before I get around to that trip.