Brown Snakes in Grid!

It just hit me that I forgot to write about my very own article about brown snakes (Storeria dekayi) that ran in the current issue of Grid!

Check out the article at

http://www.gridphilly.com/grid-magazine/2010/3/10/gardening-issue-snakes-in-the-garden.html

or on page 19 at http://www.gridphilly.com/digital-edition/ for how it looks in the print layout.

On Saturday (March 27th) I went on a little walk in Morris Park up in the corner of West Philly with my friend Tevin. It was sunny but cool (high 40s), a fine afternoon for a walk and a good time for the red back salamanders (Plethodon cinereus).

Under one small log we found seven of them in both colors (lead back and red back), a couple fat with eggs still to be laid, and even a couple itty bitty babies.

Here are the seven:

The babies:

Here are some shots of the grown ups. Note the little bumps, cirrae, under the upper lip of this guy:
Here's a lead back:
And here's a red back:

We're getting all caught up in spotted turtle (Clemmys guttata) season right now, but before I start posting nothing but out yellow polka-dotted friends, I thought I'd put up a quick post of a quick trip from last week.

I got to my favorite marsh a little later than I had planned (too late for spotted turtles, apparently), but set off wandering anyhow as the sunlight cooled (temps in the high 50s) and the shadows stretched out.



I was feeling pretty unaccomplished as I crossed a bridge over a shallow creek and my vision snagged on a shape in the mud at the bottom. Was that a leaf or a turtle? I took a step back to get a different angle... still not sure. I took a few steps forward... still, still not sure. I scratched my head a moment while staring. That resolved nothing.

Finally I waded in, reached down, and my finger tips hit shell. I pulled up this little cutie (I mean that sincerely, even though Jen always remarks on how ugly she finds them). Note the small tail in the middle photo - males have tails that are almost as long as one of their legs.

That's my first stinkpot (a.k.a. musk turtle - Sternotherus oderatus), so named because of scent glands they deploy when scared. This girl didn't, but she did launch a little snap at me while I was working the camera - note that stinkpots have strong jaws and longer necks than you might expect, so keep your fingers relatively far back on the shell while handling them. These turtles like slow-moving and shallow water, and split their time between hiding in mud and vegetation; marching over the bottom, poking those long noses around and crunching up invertebrates; and a little basking, often several feet above the water on over-hanging branches you never imagined such a clunky little creature could scale. One of my guidebooks notes that if a turtle falls into your canoe from above your heads, it's probably a stinkpot. Here she is hiding again after the release:

I made another another find that left me feeling accomplished again. I flipped a piece of tin Scott and I had set out last year, and it finally yielded snakes: two garter snakes (Thamnophis sirtalis). Here's the yearling curled up (I apologize again for the orientation of the photo - some day I'll switch blog hosts over this problem):

...and here's the adult smiling for the camera as garter snakes do:

March House of Herps!

When I got that first email about House of Herps at the end of 2009 I thought they were nuts to start a blog carnival (that concept sounded a little nutty too - who ever heard of a blog carnival?) about reptiles and amphibians in the dead of winter. They managed to turn out some nice editions in spite of the chilly weather, but now is when it's really getting fun. Check out the latest HOH here at Kind of Curious.

One spring peeper (Pseudacris crucifer) isn't all that impressive, but a few dozen can belt out a blanket of sound. (I guess we shouldn't expect much from a 'peeper,' though they do sound bigger than they are; inevitably the first peeper you find is much smaller than you were expecting). That's one of my favorite sensations - to stand in the darkness as the individual voices merge into that solid chorus all around you.

Once a year the spotted salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum) come out in their polka-dotted masses to hold their orgies. The chuckling/quacking wood frogs (Rana sylvatica) do the same thing, though a little less attractive in their subdued tan with darker masks. There are places we know we'll find them, which was where we headed the past couple springs, but this year Jen and I headed somewhere new.

Not exactly somewhere new, I guess, rather a marsh we frequent later in the spring, but where we've seen the after-effects of salamander orgies, the blobby egg masses they leave behind. I figured if we'd seen egg masses, we'd find the spotted salamanders on the right warm, rainy night.

I guess we didn't pick the right night. On Sunday, after about three solid days of rain (and after we'd slogged a half hour through sopping woods and thigh-high water that was too much for Jen's waders), the places we'd look for the spotted salamanders were deep under water from the adjacent flooded creek, and we couldn't spot any spotteds.

The peepers were out in force, though, and I was thrilled to be out there to hear them again (even if Jen wasn't so thrilled about her flooded waders).

DVHS meeting rescheduled to March 26th!

We have rescheduled the February meeting we postponed due to snow (http://phillyherping.blogspot.com/2010_01_31_archive.html) to March 26th. It's the same time, same topic, same location.

Winter is over! I don't care what the calendar says. The strengthening sun has vanquished the heaps of snow, and our reptilian friends are emerging. So as soon as you finish this, get outside! Flip boards and wade into the mud. Pick your vernal pools and as soon as you see a rainy day on the forecast (next weekend?) make plans to greet the horny hordes of spotted salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum), wood frogs (Rana sylvatica), and the spring peepers (Pseudacris crucifer).

For now, take advantage of the sunny days and see some turtles! Yesterday (March 7th) we returned with Scott, Caroline, and Miles to an old-favorite spot to see an old-favorite population of spotted turtles (Clemmys guttata). (note to non-herpers: I am being purposefully vague about the location. Spotted turtles are in decline in much of the Northeast, and even if they're common in some types of habitat, we're doing a fine job of getting rid of such habitat. Where they're common, they're at high risk from poaching - easy to catch and profitable to sell, so we're extremely cautious about discussing their locations, especially online.)



On Saturday Jen and I had run out to the Mt. Moriah cemetery and hadn't seen anything, just tracks left from voles that had tunneled under the now-melted snow:

So we went on Sunday with some uncertainty. It was too early for the Philadelphia brown snakes (Storeria dekayi); was it too early for the spotted turtles?

It wasn't too early for the black rat snakes, or rather it should have been. Readers of this blog might already be familiar with my reverence for the region's greatest snake (I'm happy to defend that statement; bring it on), and so when Scott started hollering "Oh Billy! Come here!) I knew what he had found.

Then his voice took a turn for the disappointed. This is really strange, so I'll start with a photo:

Blogger's crappy photo function keeps loading this sideways, but does that rat snake look dead to you? It didn't smell funny, it had plenty of muscle, and only one obvious wound:

That messed up eye didn't seem like enough to kill a snake, and we're still not sure what happened, just that at the time it felt like a powerfully ill omen to begin the herping season, especially given that the next find was an empty box turtle shell (Terrapene carolina).

Luckily we started finding live herps soon after. Jen flipped some redback salamanders (Plethodon cinereus):


...and finally, finally, Scott called out that he had found a spotted turtle. This little lady was basking next to a vernal pool before we rudely grabbed her, and in what could only have been a thoroughly terrifying experience, handed her off to a toddler. Here's Miles with the turtle:

Here's the girl on her own, ready to get back to ground level again:

Here's what she did as soon as we put her down. Can't really blame her:

We walked around a while more; Jen, Caroline, and Miles headed back to the car to read the Sunday paper and bask in the sun (temps in the mid 50s - quite nice) while Scott and I tried two more pools.

One was empty of turtles, but the other... well, we stepped into the water, and Scott and I started seeing turtles at the same time. He saw one on a log; I saw one on the base of a tree:

Then we saw a little group of them hanging out on the base of another tree. Note how wet they are; I get the impression they were just climbing out of the water - relatively late for spotties, which are generally morning people.

Scott got his hands on three of them for some photos:


Here's one of the last patches of snow. Let's all point at it and make fun of it:





(Is it wrong to admit that last night I dreamed of timber rattlers - Crotalus horridus?)

DVHS Meeting Postponed!

Hi Folks,

We have postponed the Delaware Valley Herpetological Society meeting that we had scheduled for this evening (Friday, Feb. 26th). We'll let everyone know the new date once we have it scheduled.

House of Herps February!

Check out the third edition of House of Herps, this time hosted by Xenogere, a nature writer and blogger based in Texas who takes some gorgeous photos of birds and other wildlife - take some time to check out the site beyond the House of Herps and you won't be disappointed.

As for the timing, it's still winter, but there are some fun posts from Central America where winter doesn't matter, and some remembrances of herps past. If House of Herps is this much fun in the cruelest month of the year, it'll be a blast by the time we hit May.

Nothing cold-blooded is moving at 25 degrees, even in the sun. All of us herpers north of Florida have to confront the lack of action in our own ways, but I submit that winter is best spent doing two things: scouting and laying boards.

Scouting is what it sounds like - exploring new locations where we might find critters, ground proofing promising spots on the map, and imagining what might be walking through that water or dragging itself through the mud once the mud has thawed and shed its top two inches of ice.

Laying boards might be new to the birders and general naturalists out there, but it follows from a rather un-natural fact of herping: Trash is good. There is little that makes a herper as happy has finding a barn collapsing in an old field, with boards and roofing tin scattered about in the high grass. Any one of those boards could hide any of a number of lizards, snakes, and (depending on the moisture underneath) frogs, toads, and salamanders. The same can be said for old mattresses, abandoned cars dropping body panels, or old pieces of carpet. There is fun herping to be done in pristine habitat, but we secretly (or not so secretly in this case) love illegal dumping. When we find that disorderly heap of roofing shingles off a dirt road, we make sure to do what the litterbug should have done and arrange them to provide optimal herp cover.

It doesn't take too great a leap of creativity to start laying out your own similar debris. In the world of professional field herpetologists, intentionally distributed boards are called 'cover board arrays,' though we amateurs usually refer to them 'board lines.' All you need is a cooperative land owner and some old debris, and you can get started.

My herping buddy Scott and I have developed that kind of strong relationship with a local landowner in the woods/farm/subdivision country to the west of Philadelphia, and for a second winter we are scouting and laying out boards.

We're targeting a couple snake species with those boards. One is the somewhat common eastern milksnake (Lampropeltis triangulum), a snake we've found in other board lines before. A few years ago Scott had very industriously distributed some boards and tin sheets that he had found discarded in a field in north-central PA. His hard work paid off. Indeed in a total of twenty minutes over two mornings in the September of 2007 we flipped three milk snakes in addition to a black racer (Coluber constrictor), and a ring neck snake (Diadophis punctatus).

I love milk snakes. These are shiny, strong snakes that end up modestly patterned with brown blotches on a beige or gray background...

...but start life with red blotches on a cream background. Here's a half-grown milk snake we found last summer, near where we laid boards on January 31st:

We're also interested in finding copperheads (Agkistrodon contortrix), a widespread pit viper species that appears to be in decline in Pennsylvania. The land owner has reported them from a section of rocky upland woods and field, but we haven't seen them yet. It would be especially nifty to log these and make an official record for the folks who track our sensitive herp species (check out the PA Herp Atlas Project).

Of course copperheads are beautiful in their own right and would be fun to find even if they weren't getting scarce. Here's a nice one my friend Eitan photographed en situ in the mountains:


So, on the morning of the 31st we were ready to scout some nice marsh habitat and lay boards in the uplands. First, though, we needed boards. Scott had some in his back yard that he'd been saving for just this occasion, so we started with those in the back of his Subaru:


Next stop, Ikea! Ikea? Yeah, I wondered the same thing, but Scott reported that he had seen a pile of extra boards (unneeded furniture parts) for really cheap at Ikea on a previous trip. When we got there and had finally woven our way past the glassware, rugs, and light fixtures to the spot near checkout where Scott remembered the boards, we found... no boards. The friendly Ikea attendant informed us that the boards are available at the END of the day, so we made the best of the situation and stocked up on little chocolate cream cookies and lingonberry concentrate.

Our friend the landowner had reported a large stockpile of boards left over from renovating a building on the property, so we had more to work with than just what Scott had stockpiled in his back yard. The ground was frozen and snow was still on the ground, but that makes no difference for board laying:

Boards can take a while to settle down, attract rodents, and become part of the yearly routine for the neighborhood critters, so these might not pay of this spring and summer, but we figure they'll start yielding finds within a year and a half.

Frogs in February!

Can you tell your pickerel frog from your leopard frog? Your bulls from your greens? Is that a chorus frog or just a pissed-off peeper?

On Friday February 26th, the Delaware Valley Herpetological Society will be holding a public meeting featuring Ned Gilmore of the Academy of Natural Sciences talking about the frogs of the lower Delaware Valley. We'll be back in Marple, PA (more details and directions forthcoming) and the tentative start time is 8pm.

This is a great chance to bone up on your frog familiarity as we head into the amphibian breeding season, which should (let's keep those fingers crossed) break only a week or two after the meeting.

Happy New Year! I know that it's nearly the end of January, but we're talking about the herping year here, and it really does start with the amphibian breeding seasons. Who kicks off the amphibian breeding season? I say it's the tiger salamander (Ambystoma tigrinum), who come out in the winter to breed in the first warm rain once their vernal (or winter?) pools fill up. This could be in November, this could be in February, but whenever it is, I consider it the first event of the herping year.

Of course for three years I've struck out on the first herping event of the year and hadn't ever seen a live adult tiger salamander (I'm not counting their eggs, which I've seen two of the years); the first event of the herping year has been mostly symbolic, a time to put in a good effort and wander around in the dark.

On Sunday January 24th Scott and I drove to our supposed tiger spot and got there around dusk, with not quite enough light to find our ways to the big vernal pools (last year they weren't even there - 2009 was a lot wetter). We did have to switch on the headlamps, and, what do you know, we saw salamanders in the beams.

They weren't grown up yet, and they weren't tigers, rather their earlier-breeding cousins the marbled salamanders (Ambystoma opacum). The females lay eggs in vernal pools before they fill up; that way they get the jump on the other salamanders and frogs.


Ideally we'd have had a lot of rain, but, as happens so often, the weather didn't cooperate with our plans. We got a little drizzle, then nothing, then a little drizzle, then nothing, but that was enough for a few other species.

We spotted a toad sitting on the asphalt, upright and still as we approached. We figured it would be one of the really common Bufo species (American or Fowler's), but we were surprised and delighted to find a more special critter, a spade foot toad (Scaphiophus holbrookii). These little guys tend to stay underground until the right spring rain event, when they pop out by the hundreds and converge on the lucky pool. I remember a vacation (seven years ago?) in Alabama when Jen and I opened the motel door to find a spadefoot looking at us, and dozens of its compadres hopping around the parking lot. I haven't seen one since.


This one was cold, still, and a little dry looking, but still cute with those big pop-up eyes.

We saw a couple of the more common southern leopard frogs (Rana utricularia) leaping across the road. At 52 degrees they're a lot easier to catch than they are in the summer at 85.

Here's another little frog, the gray tree frog (Hyla versicolor or chrysoscelis
After an hour and a half of driving around, we asked Scott's GPS unit where we should get a beer and a snack. It wasn't raining, and we figured we might kill an hour or so and save some gas while the tiger salamanders weren't likely to come out. When we came out of the restaurant the rain was indeed starting to fall, so we congratulated ourselves on the wise decision and hit the roads again.

I thought it was a wounded snake at first - sometimes they flop around reflexively after they've been run over by a car - but that didn't make any sense. We stopped, hopped out, and it wasn't any snake at all; what we'd seen flopping back and forth was the flat, ungainly-long tail of a male tiger salamander!



Here's a shot of its cloaca to show how swollen it is - a sign of a male ready to breed (it just doesn't look comfortable to me, kind of like the inflamed rear of a female baboon in heat).


What's next in the budding herping year of 2010? I figure we've still got at least a month of winter before the spotted salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum) bust out with their frog buddies. Maybe we'll get lucky with another run for tigers, but I also want to squeeze in a tad more scouting and board laying.

Everybody needs to check out House of Herps #2, another fun round of herp blog posts. I submitted the recent post about not finding redback salamanders (Plethodon cinereus).

A quick note - Scott and I finally, FINALLY, FINALLY found tiger salamanders (Ambystoma tigrinum) on the fourth year of trying! As soon as Scott gets me the photos from his camera ("You might need to charge the battery on the camera," Jen said. Did I listen?) , I'll do the post.

January, the Second-Cruelest Month (or, even the redbacks are holding out on me)

I found nothing today, nada. This isn't entirely surprising. The sun is out and the temperature outside in Philadelphia is in the mid-40s, and that isn't much for creatures that can't produce their own heat. Still I had had such high hopes. I have found redback salamanders (Plethodon cinereus) in the 40s before, and I had hoped to find one or two today to make myself feel better.

(In case you don't believe me, here are is a January redback from 2006):


January is the second-cruelest month. I read in the Inquirer last week that the second half of this month is historically the coldest period of the year, and the first half was dominated by a wicked cold snap, with day after day sticking stubbornly below freezing. We've still got snow piles from December:


Sure we're in the middle of a warm spell, but for the most part the nights have still dropped below freezing. We still have brutal February to go, cruelest for coming after our January has already half-crushed our herping will.

I had the afternoon off because this morning I had some oral surgery. I would have been fully justified to spend the day on the sofa reading or watching movies; my mouth was thoroughly numbed for the procedure (a good thing judging by all the tugging, scraping, and sewing I could still feel), but by mid-day sensation had returned to my gums, and it wasn't good.

So I did whatever I do when I need to cheer myself up: I went herping. I headed for the Woodlands Cemetery, maybe a poorer choice than the Mt. Moriah Cemetery, but I could walk to the Woodlands, and I'd have to get on my bike for Mt. Moriah. I might look absurd walking through West Philly holding an ice pack to my lower lip, but at least I can pull it off; riding my bike like that is a step more awkward than I'm willing to try right now. (I type this now with the aid of a belt tied around my head supporting the ice pack - not a road worthy contraption)

Redback salamanders are the most common vertebrates in the Northeast. They're active in cool weather, and close to the surface in cooler weather, so if I'm going to find any critters in West Philly in January, they're it.

Give me a few more nights above freezing and I'm pretty sure I'd have found one, but the ground was still frozen just under the surface, an indication to me that the redbacks would be a little deeper than I could reach. Dig the frost under this otherwise suitable chunk of log:



I did find some life under other pieces, but all of it invertebrate. I lifted my favorite board in the entire cemetery, one that's hidden brown snakes (Storeria dekayi) in kinder weather as well as redbacks, but found just worms, grubs, slugs, beetles, millipedes, and centipedes - lots of centipedes.



I have an uneasy relationship with these centipedes, kind of like someone you don't like to talk to but who shows up at the same parties you do. They catch my eye in a similar way to how little salamanders do (and then there was a scary, late-night encounter I had with one of their much larger cousins in Mexico when I was in college that left me with a grudge). These days I say hi, and that's about it.



All those invertebrates made me wonder if there were redbacks to be found that I just hadn't. Maybe they were avoiding me, revenge for all the disparaging remarks I've made about them - cute and pretty, yes, but in fall and spring so abundant as to be annoying. I hope they don't read this blog; they'd get the impression that I only really love them when no one else is around. I'd hide too.