I like to say that road cruising is what you do when there's no other herping you can do. Maybe you're in a hot place where the critters are all impossible to find in the heat of the day (kind of applies to Philly lately), or maybe you're in a place where all the land is private and you only have access to the roads (Texas), or maybe you're injured or disabled and can't hike, canoe, or swim.

The latter applies to me these days - the ankle I should still be resting after that excessively long bike ride from a couple posts ago, and then last week a painful, albeit quickly recovering lower back problem. I figured I just might be able to hack some low-grade muddling - feeling around in mud and weeds for turtles.

I was particularly interested in some cooter. That isn't dirty, cooter (an interesting word descending from an African term originally brought over by slaves) is the common term for turtles in the genus Pseudemys, mostly Southeastern river turtles. I just got back from a Florida vacation and had a great time down there with their cooters. We call our local cooter species "red-bellied turtles" (Pseudemys rubriventris), and I figured I might as well get in the water and start looking.

I tried a lake in the Pine Barrens in New Jersey. There are a lot of ponds and lakes in the Pine Barrens, and almost every one is thick with turtles - mostly painted turtles (Chrysemys picta) but also some red-bellies.

Not a bad place to wallow around for an hour or so, even if I didn't catch anything.

Here's one of the turtles I wasn't catching: it's the dark shape sticking out of the water in the foreground. They do this; they watch you from a safe distance, safe in the knowledge that you can't swim as well as they can.

Still, I got to thinking I could snorkel in this kind of water. I'm not sure how well I'd do at catching anything, but the water, although orange with iron as is usual for the Barrens, was clear enough for me to see about a yard, which will get me to the bottom for the most part.
I decided to do a cruising passes on a nice road on the way home, the situation filling two of the three valid excuses for road cruising (heat and physical limitation).

Road cruising in the Barrens usually turns up very little - some Fowler's toads (Bufo fowleri), maybe some other assorted frogs, some of our local snakes smeared all over the pavement, and if you're really lucky, maybe, just maybe a live snake.

It gets boring pretty quickly. I drove back and forth, seeing toads hop out of the way. I did stop and take a photo of one as a voucher for the NJ Herp Atlas Project - winding up this year, but I'll do one last set of reports at the end of the season.


...and then I saw something different. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world when my eyes fixed on it, but there on the shoulder was a small timber rattler (Crotalus horridus), crawling along the road, not across at a quick perpendicular angle like most snakes have the sense to do.

I hopped out of the car to take some photos and to shoo it off the road - asphalt is no place for a snake to hang out... as the next find made clear.

I had turned onto a faster road to head for home, tailed by someone probably late for their party, when I saw my headlights shining off the sides of coils in the middle of the lane right in front of me. I couldn't slam on the brakes, so I held my breath, swerved over to the shoulder to let the car past, pulled a quick U-turn, and jumped out to see if it was still there.

This is one of the worst feelings in herping, that I might have been forced to let a snake get run over. I pictured one of the tires behind me catching it enough to kill it, but not quite instantly, so that it would writhe around in agony or try to drag itself off the road before expiring.

Sure enough the snake was dead, but - and this made me feel the slightest bit better - it only had the slightest bit of reflex movement left in it. I interpret this to mean that it had been dead for a few minutes, longer than a split second, long enough that I could have done nothing to save it. Here is it, where I pulled it over to the grass for a photo.

At about three feet this absolutely beautiful eastern or 'chain' (from the white, chain-like pattern on the shiny black background) king snake (Lampropeltis getula) was a good deal longer than the glimpse I had caught of it in the middle of the road; I'm pretty sure it was already half-coiled in a pile from its death throes when I had spotted it, not stretched out to get across the road.

This is another reason I don't like road cruising at night, in addition to the laziness of it all and the stark, de-contextualized encounters of snakes on asphalt, habitat hidden by darkness (might as well be on your driveway). It just depresses me to see so many beautiful creatures dead.

House of HERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRPS!

That's right folks, the July House of Herps is out and as awesome as ever! Set aside a half hour (you don't really need to answer that email, do you?) and check out the great posts from across the internet.

I have a pretty high heat tolerance, but even I am sick of the incessant hot weather we've been having in the Delaware Valley. Most of the herps we look for stay well under cover (often deep under ground) during the day when it's up in the 90s and 100s, and with the sun waking up obscenely early this time of year, it hurts to try to dodge the heat by heading out at dawn.

What's left? Turtling! Some Philadelphians hit the swimming pools to stay cool. I head for the rivers.

In this case it's been the Delaware, the beautiful rocky portion upstream from Trenton. Maybe there are herps in the tidal section closer to home, but that stretch of the river scares me for swimming, and it's too murky to see anything in the water anyhow.

A couple weeks ago I headed to the Delaware with a buddy to look for my beloved map turtles (Graptemys geographica). These are river turtles native to the Susquehanna River system in PA, but that have become established in the Delaware system as well, apparently spreading out from a release point near Yardley, PA in the early 20th Century.

I have a blast looking for them. Turtles that drop into the water from a basking perch often head right to the bottom and try to hide among the rocks and other debris, so basically you put on a mask and snorkel and just search the bottom near where you've seen them basking.

We had seen a few big females (female map turtles are much bigger than the males - about 8 to 10 inches versus <6 for the males) basking, but we only turned up this one smallish male. Isn't he pretty?

I'll show off with this next photo; I just got a submersible camera. I'm not much of a gadget person, but this thing does make aquatic herping a lot easier for me; I don't have to worry about getting it wet, of course, but more importantly I can take photos of critters where and when I find them rather than having to drag them back to a base on land where I've left a camera that I couldn't take in with me.


A few days later I decided to head back to the Delaware by way of a spot reputed to host spiny softshell turtles (Apalone spinifera). These are very funky looking turtles; as the name implies they have a leathery skin in place of other turtles' keratin shell. They also have a snorkel nose, making them look like a badly drawn, half melted version of the turtles we're more familiar with. They're also wary and very fast, so I was happy when I spotted one swimming on the other side of the creek, even though I was in no position to catch it at the moment, and even though none of the photos turned out. Here's one from the PA Fish and Boat Commission website:




I continued on in my travels (by bicycle - an ill advised long distance trip about four and a half times as far as my previous longest bicycle trip. I'm not sure what I was thinking, but my left ankle is still not happy about the whole thing) up along the Delaware by the towpath canal for a ways. I saw a lot of this:

That's a turtle swimming near the surface, maybe catching some rays, maybe keeping an eye on me.

I saw a lot of turtles basking. Here's a two-for, a small snapper (Chelydra serpentina, which are not avid baskers, making this somewhat interesting) sharing log space with a very young painted turtle (Chrysemys picta).

Here are a couple grown up painteds basking.

I also saw a red-eared slider (Trachemys scripta elegans, an invasive species in these parts), a redbelly turtle (Pseudemys rubriventris) with basking with most of her shell out of the water but her legs still in it, a stinkpot (a.k.a. musk turtle, Sternotherus oderatus), and what I think was a map turtle basking as well. I saw oodles of those map turtles on the river, crowded on almost every decent rock, it seemed.

I managed to not catch any, but I had a nice time swimming around looking.

One last thing - I know these are birds, and common birds at that, but this scene was too cute to pass up:

Here's the rat snake! I had been driving around with Shoshi after the Wetlands Institute terrapin (Malaclemys terrapin) release event, and we decided to make one more pass through some woods and marshland not too far away. Shoshi's dad, Eitan, and she had been there last year and had found both terrapins and some really impressive black rat snakes (Pantherophis obsoleta). Just as we were driving up to a spot where Shoshi and Eitan had seen a rat snake on that trip a year before, she called out the snake on the left shoulder of the road.

I drove a little closer and stopped the car. I took my time walking over to it, taking a couple photos of the snake in the classic frozen, kinked pose that rat snakes strike when they're surprised (this doesn't work out well with most moving cars).

I find that rat snakes often focus on your face when you come at them; this makes it easy to pick them up by gently getting a hand under the body and then lifting while the snake is looking you in the eye. They are also comfortable off the ground (unlike racers - Coluber constrictor - that tend to panic when they're in the air), so you can often handle them calmly for a moment.

I took a lot of photos of this snake; it's hard for me to hold back and only post a few.

I let the snake crawl up my arm to my shoulder, where it stopped, still looking me in the eye, and gaped threateningly.

I was in love. What style! What restraint! The snake did nip me on the hand once, but otherwise decided to communicate not by biting, but by putting on a calm display of displeasure.

Just as I set it down, I realized I had forgotten to check whether it was a male or female, so I held onto its tail a moment to look - male.

That rat snake would have made any herping trip, but the day was a lot more successful than just that. On our first pass, before we went to the Wetlands Institute, we immediately spotted a rough green snake (Opheodrys aestivus) in the woods on the way to the marsh we were cruising (we had seen a box turtle - Terrapene carolina - on the way. We helped it across the road, just as a county worker maybe fifty yards up from us shouted "I've got this one!").

These are beautiful little insect-eaters that I see DOR a few times a year but hardly ever catch alive.

The snakes were fun, but the real target was the terrapins. We spotted this girl digging a nest hole on the side of the road (note that it was low tide, contrary to what I usually hear about them coming up to lay at high tide).

We saw this really pretty girl walking around looking for a nice patch of dirt.


I love that concentric ring pattern on the scutes.

On our second sweep of the day, after the rat snake, we saw one of my little favorite herps booking it across the hot dirt road - a female mud turtle (Kinosternon subrurbrum).


If you're ever wondering whether the little homely turtle in hand is a mud turtle or a musk turtle/stinkpot (Sternotherus oderatus), check the belly - the plastron. A musk turtle has a highly reduced but whole plastron. You see the legs and tail around the edge of the plastron. The mud turtle has a more complete plastron with a hinge just above the bridge (hence the genus name).

Here's a stinkpot for comparison:

I'll wind up with another box turtle we found just as we were leaving - what a nice head on this turtle.

Here are some of my shots from our day at the Wetlands Institute.

Here are some of the headstarted hatchlings before release:

Here are the WI volunteers showing the terrapins (Malaclemys terrapin) to the kids:
Here's an injured/rehabbed female, being released by the kindergarten teacher:

Here is a kid doing his own release with a couple WI interns:
A shot of the marsh:

Some amorous horseshoe crabs:
Here's the female who chose the perfect time and place (the path to the release site, just as a crowd of children and media were walking by) to dig her nest:



I'll wind up with one of the really cool predator excluder devices, a cage that keeps out the crows, raccoons, skunks, and anything else that would eat the eggs:

Readers of this blog might already know that I have a borderline-unhealthy obsession with the black rat snake (Pantherophis obsoleta). No local critter excites me so much when I find it or occupies more time and energy of the herp-finding centers of my brain. It is a cruel joke of the herping gods that I hardly ever find one. I'm on a one-per-year rate now, in spite of spending almost all of my herping time in black rat snake habitat.

As evidence of my obsession, I've already started this post talking about something besides the most exciting experience of this particular day (June 17th) for anyone else: kindergartners releasing baby diamondback terrapins (Malaclemys terrapin) into the wild.

Along with lots of fascinating terrapin research and inspiring terrapin conservation work, the Wetlands Institute dissects DOR (Dead On the Road - herper lingo for roadkill) adult female terrapins and removes the eggs for incubation. The hatchlings spend a year at Stockton College beefing up before their release in June. The Wetlands Institute displays some impressive media savvy (and some environmental education savvy) by having little kids release the turtles, attracting local reporters and television cameras, bringing much-needed attention to the threats facing the terrapins and the WI's conservation efforts.

The two biggest threats are old crab traps that drown the terrapins and the automobile. Turtles are no match for car tires, and each year thousands of females get crushed before they can lay their eggs - not sustainable for long-lived, slow-breeding turtles. We actually found two DOR females on the way to the WI and brought them in for egg rescue (...we hope - the WI can salvage eggs out of only a small portion of the DORs; they got 650 DOR females last year and this year are releasing only about 130 baby turtles.). The WI website features some impressive citizen-led turtle fencing efforts for you Shore dwellers to emulate, and the rest of us can (1) slow down and (2) help turtles cross the road, always in the direction they were heading.

What about the rat snake? Well, our main computer is broken right now, forcing us to use a really clunky, freeze-prone backup until this weekend when we get the new one. Without the computer to process the photos, I'm holding off on loading them for the moment. I'll just leave the story of the snake(s) as a weekend cliff hanger, and give you a link to Lee Stabert of Grid's blog post about the event with her great photos.

House of HERRRRRRRRRRRRRRPS!

Check it out - House of Herps #7! I worked in the toadlets, and there is a lot of other fun reptile and amphibian photos and writing in this issue.

This isn't exactly about herping, but Grid has run another article of mine, this one a look at six different spots around Philadelphia where you can go for a nature walk along with a small piece focusing on the Heinz NWR and their bald eagle family.

It's only fair that I post about some of the trips on which I don't find very much. Forums like Field Herp Forum and blogs like this one can give the impression that every time we go out we're tripping over rattlers (Crotalus horridus) or pulling spotted turtles (Clemmys guttata) out of the mud every time we wade into a marsh, when we generally strike out more often.

Last Friday I tried out another rocky Pennsylvania ridge I had scouted early in the spring. The weather was perfect and I was on time - the day didn't heat up very fast, so I arrived when any snakes would likely still have been basking. I was expecting the best.

I found nothing. Actually, I did find something:

I found one tiny (yearling?) garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis) hiding under a rock, sort of a split flake of a boulder on top of the boulder. In Eitan's immortal words, it wasn't a snakeless day.

I covered a lot of ground, wading/hacking my way through underbrush, hopping from boulder to boulder, each moment expecting to see one of the target species (black rat snake - Pantherophis obsoleta, copperhead - Agkistrodon contortrix, timber rattler) , but finding only a really good workout and a few new scrapes and bruises.

I've been getting up to the mountains less often than I would like, but over Memorial Day weekend I managed a trip to an entirely new spot (for me at least). I haven't done this in at least a year - visit a new place during optimal rattlesnake searching weather (I've scouted new places in winter, but I haven't gone back to check them out in season).

As usual, I was late. The weather was sunnier and warmer than I would have preferred for rattlesnakes (Crotalus horridus), and even though I had gotten up obscenely early and the roads were clear, I knew that by the time I reached my south-facing hillside destination the sun would have a few hours jump on me and that it would feel hot, whatever the forecast said. I guess I'd have had to have woken up a couple hours before dawn to reach the slope around the same time as the sun, but I still felt delinquent about it.

Whatever I would find that day, I would earn it, I thought as I hiked nearly straight up the ridge, breaking away from the trail when it stopped going my way. I crested the ridge, already sweating profusely, and checked my coordinates. Something rustled beside me, and I took this little American toad as a good omen.




I followed the top of the ridge a little while, and then dropped pretty much straight down the ridge, which continued to pitch steeper and steeper as I went.

In the summer the foliage keeps you from getting clear views of the rocks and cliffs until you're right up on them. Teasing glimpses of gray or white keep you hacking through the next greenbriar or blackberry thicket (note to self: this spot will taste fabulous in another month), and after a few such patches that yielded nothing, I hit a cliff face I couldn't manage. I turned uphill and started scrambling, hacking up the 50 degree pitch (I'm not exaggerating; I checked it on Google Earth) to the top of that particular cliff.

Greenbriar doesn't have the worst thorns of the forest, but its long, flexible vines do a great job of wrapping around your leg and then tripping you before you realize they've started puncturing your pants and your skin. I end up taking big, sweeping strides to negotiate greenbriar, either stepping over it or trying to trap it down with the sole of my boot so that I can clear it without any trouble.

I was taking just such a long step, focusing on catching the briars with my boot when the pattern recognition part of my brain sounded the alarm.

I was aiming my foot only a few inches away from the most perfectly coiled, pretty little yellow timber rattler basking in just a dapple of sunshine on the leaf litter (the shot above from after the light had shifted a little, the one below earlier in the photo session).

The combination of my heart already pounding from the exertion and then the adrenalin rush of nearly stepping on a rattler, PLUS the general thrill of having validated the whole trip with the target species, clean overwhelmed me. I took a couple photos (that little rattler didn't flinch, but I did see it breathing hard) and then called Scott and babbled incoherently until I calmed down.

I took a drink of water, took some more photos, and bid the little guy farewell. I found a couple more rattlers - one I saw, and one I only heard duck away under the boulder next to the one I was standing on.


The way that girl was tucked in among the boulders and the alacrity with which the other had hid implied that finding any others was going to be hard; they were already warmed up and jumpy. I hiked around a bit more, in scouting mode more than hunting mode.

I was late getting home too. I tore myself off the slope too late and then booked it back down through the woods again.

These woods were mostly deciduous, with lots of chestnut oak trees, with bark textured with blocky ridges and long, wavily indented leaves. As I was charging along through the woods, though, a sapling caught my eye.

That wasn't a chestnut oak. In fact, it looked like... a real chestnut tree? These were wiped out by the chestnut blight a hundred years ago. Some of the old roots keep sending up shoots that grow for a few years before the blight strikes them down again.

I thought "huh, that's cool," and then kept on trucking. It was only later that I realized I should have written down the coordinates. The PA chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation needs to know about all the trees we find; the better to build up a genetically diverse, resistant base of chestnut trees to repopulate our woodlands.

I felt a little bad for missing the major toad (Bufo americanus) breeding migration this spring. The horny little guys moved a couple weeks earlier than usual, and just like last year animal-loving volunteers with the Toad Detour project were out around the Roxborough Reservoir, escorting the toads across the street and blocking off the busiest stretches at peak toad/traffic activity.

Of course we all hate to see toads get squashed by tires, but this project has an important urban/suburban ecological dimension as well. Road mortality, as biologists tend to phrase it, is an important threat to reptile and amphibian populations nationwide. You see the effects (reduced populations) of a road for several hundred yards in either direction, and when you add that kind of buffer on either side of every road, you see most of our region's herpetafauna sapped by car traffic. This is one of the strongest arguments against sprawl for me. The more we leave our urban centers and stretch our suburbs out into the country, the more we build up our road networks and dice up habitat into unsustainable little chunks. Every time someone moves out to the woods (or the desert, or the shore...), he or she is adding another car that will kill a few more critters and contributing to the sprawl that will attract even more people.

Not all roads are equally damaging; a lot depends on how heavy the traffic is and how habitat is situated relative to the roads. The Upper Roxborough Reservoir has been out of use for decades and slowly turning into a wetland, perfect for toad breeding. The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education and its expansive uplands woodlands property sits across Port Royal Rd., making for a classic road mortality arrangement - a road that must be crossed by the entire breeding population. To make things worse, some new housing subdivisions nearby have boosted the human population of the neighborhood and the traffic on that road.

Here's a shot of the reservoir and the surrounding terrain. Port Royal runs from northeast to southwest across the image, with the Schuylkill Environmental Center to the west and southwest of the ball fields:


Of course the migration isn't a single, simple event. The adults go from their woodland and backyard homes to the reservoir and then hop back home once they're done breeding. Their eggs hatch into tadpoles, and then the tadpoles grow little legs, absorb their tails, and set off into the big, scary world.

Port Royal Road is one of the first major obstacles for these toadlets, and last weekend I finally got to help the Toad Detour folks as we blocked off Port Royal again and kept an eye on the incredibly tiny metamorphs as they skittered over the pavement.


Aren't they cute?

In some places it was hard to walk without stepping on them. You had to put your foot down very slowly to give them time to hop out of the way.

Even I was surprised at how darn tiny the little toads are. I took a couple shots with the usual herp photography size references to give you a sense of their size:

Other critters were moving too, namely some pickerel frogs (Rana palustris); unfortunately the only one I got to see was this unlucky frog:


The Toad Detour folks still need volunteers. Also please feel free to drop me an email and I can get you connected to the volunteer coordinator.