It looks like it's time for the Best of 2008 post, as much as I hate to admit it. I'm not quite ready to put "9" at the end of "200_" but I'm also not ready to face all the herping I didn't do, all the critters I didn't find in 2008.

I didn't find any milksnakes (Lampropeltis triangulum) in Philadelphia, at least not any alive. Scott did find this one dead and many-times compacted into snake jerky.

At the beginning of the year I decided I'd like to spend more time in Cobbs Creek. We turned up some garter snakes (Thamnophis sirtalis) at the start of the season:


but I never made it out for my grand walk up the length of Cobbs Creek's Philadelphia stretch.

Now that's not saying I didn't get in a lot of quality herping.

I started the year the right way, with a visit to some breeding spotted salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum) and wood frogs (Rana sylvatica). As cold, wet, and an unpleasant as the outing into a cold, rainy March night may be, this is one of those trips every Philly-area herper should do to kick off each year.


Here's a shot showing how pretty spotted salamanders can look by daylight (we found this one in July):

We got in a good early spring spotted turtle (Clemmys guttata) trip with friends:


... and then managed to find spotted turtles in a magnificent and enormous marsh in the rolling hills of farm country to the west of Philadelphia, a region I had planned to target at the beginning of 2008.

(me with a trap and some painted turtles - Chrysemys picta)

(a northern water snake - Nerodia sipedon)(snapping turtle - Chelydra serpentina, then lifted by Simon)

We found a lot of other critters out there, and we look forward to another year of deeper herping and spotted turtle population surveying on the property.


In general I managed to keep out of the Pine Barrens, a smashing success in my general turn to the north and west. On one of my three or four trips out there Eitan spotted one of the true prizes of the Barrens, a hognose snake (Heterodon platyrhinos):


And earlier in the day we'd spent time with female diamond back terrapins (Malaclemys terrapin):


Eitan and I also headed into the mountains of Pennsylvania on a May trip in search of black ratsnakes (Elaphe obsoleta), redbelly snakes (Storeria occipitomaculata - one of my targets for 2008) and timber rattlers (Crotalus horridus). We found none of the ratsnakes or redbellies, but we did find a bunch of timber rattlers, majestic even if they hadn't had their first sheds yet and were still dusty from hibernation.



In the heat of the summer I went a'turtling. I was searching for some of our non-native turtles - map turtles (Graptemys geographica) and spiny softshells (Apalone spinifera), but found neither. I netted and trapped oodles of stinkpots (Sternotherus odoratus), painted turtles, and I managed to net a big snapping turtle.


(Here's a trap full of painted turtles and stinkpots.)


(Here's a painted turtle)

At the end of the summer Scott, Josh, and I took a herping road trip to eastern North Carolina. I'll be posting about that trip in the coming weeks (something to look back on from the depths of February), but here's a shot of me with the greatest eastern kingsnake (Lampropeltis getula) I've ever seen.



Funny enough it was in the fall that I hit it big with timber rattlers:
(and one little copperhead - Agkistrodon contortrix - as found, photo by Eitan)



Last, I'll wind up the discussion of 2008 with one of the most exciting herping projects I've ever started (which is saying a lot - I've started a lot of projects, but can't say I've finished a ton of them) - the West Philly brown snake research project. I've started marking snakes at two locations, the idea being to learn more about the demographics of at least a couple populations and maybe answer some interesting questions about how little snakes get by in a big city.


Here's a shot of the pants that produced so many brown snakes this fall:



... but that's not all! Last year I ended with a parade of box turtles (Terrapene carolina). This year, a parade of stinkpots!

Last night I dreamed of copperheads (Agkistrodon contortrix). It was one of those herper dreams in which everywhere I looked I saw more snakes, my excitement building as I realized this was the best herping day of my life. Most of the snakes were northern water snakes (Nerodia sipedon), but then I looked again at a couple of them, and lo and behold, copperheads!

It was a fun dream, but that happy sweet feeling I had when I woke up, fuzzily still thinking I had just seen some really cool copperheads, turned to bitter frustration when I looked outside and remembered that it is early January. I haven’t seen a copperhead since October, and I won’t see one again at least until April – more than three months from now.

Probably not by coincidence I was looking at photos of copperheads and timber rattlers (Crotalus horridus) last night. The images lingered until my dreaming brain, through whatever bizarre rules that govern dream production, yanked them back out for a fantasy. My dream probably thought it was doing me a favor, but I’m not so sure.

December was hard. I did find some amphibians in Georgia over Christmas, and I’ll post those soon, but we’re hurting. Scott is frustrated, I’m frustrated, I’m taking advantage of the lull to write a lot and take care of other tasks in my life that I otherwise neglect for herping, but this much frustration this early in the winter does not bode well.

Jen and I went on a little hike in the Wissahickon on Saturday. It’s hard to call a hike in forty degree weather a herping trip, but I did turn over some boards, stones, and logs in a place I sometimes see long-tailed salamanders (Eurycea longicaudata), but all I found was half-frozen mud.

Maybe some proper scouting will cure this bug. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for the weekend.

Back in the May a few of us went on a spotted turtle (Clemmys guttata) trip to one of our traditional spotted turtle sites. This is a place I don't think I ever would have found if other herpers hadn't told me about it - nothing from the road indicates that the woods way back there are worth inspecting, and even once you're in the woods you sometimes don't notice the vernal pools and wetlands until you're right on top of them.

I'm going to remain extremely vague about the locale and even about my companions, but the pictures are fun, and at the beginning of 2009, when it's freezing outside and shows no sign of warming any time soon, we need a jolt of good herp vibes to keep us all from picking up and moving to Miami.

We caught a bunch of turtles, and the weather didn't even fully cooperate (sunny to start, but it clouded up about halfway through), which implies we could have found a lot more in better conditions.

Here's one of the stars of the show, a spotted turtle.



We found seven basking in one spot at the shore of a vernal pool, and here's a shot of one of us corralling them for photos.

Now there's nothing wrong with a mud turtle (Kinosternum subrubrum), but they're just not as cute, or as pretty, or as rare, or as charismatic, or as photogenic... as the spotted turtles. We found several of muds as well, and here's one of the frumpy little guys.

We looked under a lot of logs. Some day we'll find something more interesting under one of those logs than a redback salamander (Plethodon cinereus), but until then, here's the under-log stars of the day.

This site is also crawling with box turtles (Terrapene carolina). They tend not to come out as much in the cooler weather as the spotted turtles, but if you look around you can find them half-buried in the leaf litter, basking in the sun but visible only from just the right angle.

There are snakes there too, in fact lots of ribbon snakes (Thamnophis sauritus), of which I realize I probably should have taken a better photo, now that I look at this one.

This will probably be one of our first spots this spring, sometime after the spotted salamanders breed in early March, but if everything goes according to plan, I actually might not make it back. There are three or four other places I'd like to find spotted turtles, so someday instead of the "spotted turtle spot" I'll be writing about the "spotted turtle circuit." Wish me luck.

January 23rd seems really far off right now, but it's only about a month away. We've got our next public Greater Philadelphia Herpetological Society meeting scheduled for that evening, and I've posted the content of the flyer below. If you'd like to come and you have any wetland species as captives that you can bring in as show and tell (let's abide by all applicable PA laws, but I figure a policy discussion might bore any kids who come, but that some critters might help keep them engaged and connected with the discussion) please let me know.

-----------------

The Greater Philadelphia Herpetological Society and the Marple Township Environmental Advisory Board present a free lecture on

Wetland Buffers and Amphibians

by Robin Mann,

VP, Sierra Club,

President, Darby Creek Valley Association

8 PM, 23 January 2009

Marple Township Building, Springfield and Sproul Roads

From the East or West: PA Rte 3 (West Chester Pike) to PA 320 (Sproul Road), South to the "T". Enter parking lot just past police station or turn left on Sproul and take your next left to get to the other parking lot (on the right).

From the North or South: Either take I-476 (Blue Route) to Exit 9 (Broomall) and go west on PA Rte 3, then south on PA rte 320 or take PA Rte 320 from wherever you are.

There is a parking lot around the Township/Library Building and one just to the east of the building. Street parking is possible on Sproul Road from the Police Station north.

Refreshments will be served. While there is no admission charge, there will be a voluntary collection to cover the speaker's fee and other expenses.

On the 23rd Jen and I are flying down to Atlanta, GA for Christmas with her family. I look forward to posting the results of whatever light herping I do down there in a few weeks, but I thought this made for a convenient point to post some finds from a trip we took down there in September.

Jen's family lives in Roswell, a suburb to the north of Atlanta, and their house backs up against a wooded ravine with a brook at the bottom. There are some parks we like to go to around there, but the ravine out back is always the first herping stop (although Jen also likes to stalk the American toads - Bufo americanus - that hang out under the lights in the house driveway at night to pick off moths drawn in by the lights).

I've found dusky salamanders (Desmognathus species) under rocks in the brook several times, but I am embarrassed to say I've never difinitively IDed them. I usually take a photo to look at later, and then realize the photo I took is too blurry, too dark, or captures the wrong part of the animal to help me identify it - for example the belly color is often a feature used to ID critters, and I keep forgetting to take belly photos.

Here's one of these inadequate photos. I never should have taken it against a white background.



One September 13th we found some critters we could ID, box turtles (Terrepene carolina)! Jen and our niece Mariana found them in the shallow water of the brook (it was 3pm, 85 degrees, and humid), apparently mating. I thought September is the wrong time of year for that, but the male was on top of the female. He fell off when Jen and Mariana got close, and they brought the happy couple up to the deck for a photo session.

The hard part about taking photos of box turtles is trying to get a shot of them with their heads and legs out - they're shy and want to stay shut up as long as you are watching. We even tried ducking back in the house for a moment and watching through a window, but then the female started scooting off, and we had to run back out so she wouldn't take a jump off the deck.

Here's a shot of me wrangling them:


Here's a shot with the male with his head out and the female just barely opening up.


Here's the release shot, with the pair back in the water where Jen and Mariana found them. The male is the larger one. I found their coloration interesting - both with very dark, almost black backgrounds and the light yellow markings.

The fruitless tiger hunt is becoming a tradition, an event when we get to break our equipment out of the closet (or more likely the car trunk, where my waders live year-round) and wander around in the cold and the rain for a few hours. Sounds like fun, doesn't it?

Part of it might be desperation. The tiger salamanders (Ambystoma tigrinum) breed when our morale is at its nadir - from late November through February - so even the slightest glimmer of a chance to find something as cool as a tiger salamander (and they sure are cool - yellow-spotted black salamanders that can get up to a foot long) is enough to drag us out onto rainy highways at rush hour for almost two hours to reach the breeding pools.

The problem is that all our likely pools are about an hour and a half away (the other end of S. Jersey and down into the Delmarva Peninsula) and it's hard to tell when the pools are full from up here in Philadelphia.

I had a strong tip that the pools I keep targeting were not full yet, but that it still might be worth road cruising for salamanders. When I related this to Scott, he perked right up at the thought of road cruising (even for salamanders) and Simon was even more enthusiastic, replying to my email with at least ten exclamation points.

We drove around a little when we got there, stopping for sticks, dead leaves, and a particularly upright clump of dirt. We parked and walked around, shining our beams around on the forest floor for anything crawling around (nothing was). The pools were as dry as we expected, but we turned over logs anyhow, hoping a salamander might have showed up early for the party and was waiting for everyone else. No luck there either - Scott flipped a redback salamander but we turned up no tigers.

The rain had slowed to a slight mist when we parked, but it picked up again on our way back to the car, and so did some calling frogs. At first it was just a spring peeper (Pseudacris crucifer) off in the distance. It's strange to hear just one peeper, so that we stopped and scrutinized it, alternating between thinking it was a frog and thinking it was some baby bird begging for food. Then there was another peep from another direction, and another, and pretty soon the slightly metallic sound of a thumb running through the teeth of a comb - a chorus frog (Pseudacris feriarum).

This gave us some hope, but it evaporated back on the road. We missed any tigers, but did find a leopard - a southern leopard frog (Rana utricularia).

The most exciting part of the evening was when we passed a small SUV at an intersection and saw that the driver had a headlamp on. We realized that he must have been road cruising too, and we pulled a quick U-turn. Our fellow herper sure drove like he was road cruising, going slowly and continually braking for sticks, leaves, and that clump of dirt.

We debated how best to contact him. I thought it must have been spooky to drive behind him like that without passing, so I argued that we should drive up alongside him and talk right away. Scott thought that would surely freak him out, but after a few minutes of our following and arguing, the driver decided for us. He pulled over to the right and we made contact.

It turned out there were two herpers in the car - both of whom I'd heard of, and we had a good quick conversation about what they'd been seeing (even a DOR wormsnake - Carphophis amoenus - and a live spadefoot toad - Scaphiophus holbrookii).

They live closer to where we were cruising than we do, and they reported that those particular pools sometimes don't even fill up until the end of the winter - February. We were pretty intrigued by the winter rain road cruising results (we hardly ever see spadefoots), however, and we think we might try it again, although maybe closer to home until we get firm word that the tiger pools actually have water in them.

There's always been something a little spooky about herping an overgrown, decrepit cemetery like Mt. Moriah. It would be the perfect setting for a horror film. At dusk I could imagine peeking into a mausoleum and a skeleton hand grabbing me by the ankle and never letting go, or a flock of bats flying out of a tree stump and turning into vampires.

We've joked about more realistic encounters - that some day I'd find a body there to go with the used condoms and other dumped trash. Of course we say same the same thing about Cobbs Creek, not to mention oodles of rural trash dumps that draw our herping attention.

On Saturday the 15th the weather was a little better than expected with a sunny break after the rain and with temperatures up into the high 60s. I found nothing at Mill Creek Farm, but I figured it couldn't hurt to dash on down to Mt. Moriah to see what I could see.

When I got there, however, what I saw were a couple unmarked Crown Victorias and a truck with a body bag in it. I waved to the detectives and one of them came over and told me a body had been dumped in the cemetery, something that he said happens from time to time. He thought it was a murdered homeless man.

I mentioned this to Scott, and a week later he called me with a bizarre but depressing twist to the story. Scott is an emergency medicine resident over at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Scott mentioned the body I'd found to one of the other doctors at the HUP emergency department, and the doctor stopped him mid-story and gave it a new ending.

Apparently right after I left the cemetery the body took a breath. The truck drove the apparently alive man to the HUP ER where Scott's colleague took care of the man, who was suffering from severe hypothermia. Unfortunately the time out in the cold was too much for him, and he died later in the week in Intensive Care.

I'll encourage everyone reading this to make a donation to the Philadelphia Committee to End Homelessness, Project HOME, Bethesda Project, or another homeless charity of your choice in memory of our anonymous neighbor from the cemetery.

To strive for an up note at the end of this post, I'll close with a couple photos of a brown snake found on a different day a few yards from where I talked to the detective:

I guess the season has ended. I'm a little depressed about it; I had a hard time summoning some positive vibes on Scott and my drive back from South Jersey on Veterans Day (November 11th) - the same spot I'd visited with Chris and Frank just a week and a half before.

That November 1st trip was unlikely too, but the temps were up in the 60s, making the difference for the box turtles and fence lizards, at least.

Earlier in the day on the 11th I'd turned up a baby brown snake in the Mt. Moriah Cemetery:


Scott and I had been debating going out into South Jersey for a few days. The forecast high temperature of 50 degrees was probably too low, even with a nice blue sky and direct sunlight. Anything basking would be showing just a coil or two, and more likely than not it would be under something close to its den.

However poor the odds, we still had to give it a shot, if for no other reason than this is what we do: we herp, and if there's even a glimmer of hope, it's better than almost anything else we could be doing.

That said, the drive back had a mournful quality, like driving back from a funeral. We spoke little, and what we said was about the cold, sterile time to come.

It isn't all that bad; we're probably being babies about it. The one nice thing about winter is that in four months it will be spring again, and damn if we won't appreciate that when it comes.

[The introduction to the post is now hard to read - leaving it in is an act of masochism]

Maybe the season never ends. Maybe we'll keep saying, "this is the last nice day..." and the herps will keep proving us wrong. I sure hope so, but I hope so in the same way that I hope I'll win the lottery on Wednesday - I know it isn't going to happen, but it's an entertaining fantasy for a little while. In fact by now, when I've scheduled this post to run, we should have nights dropping consistently into freezing, keeping our cold-blooded friends safely underground.

On Saturday November 1st I joined up with Frank and Chris to herp a lovely track of land on the edge of the Pine Barrens.

You might wonder why I didn't head back to the mountains on Saturday, a sunny day with a high in the low 60s and great prospects for basking timber rattlers (Crotalus horridus) and black ratsnakes (Pantherophis obsoleta).

I guess the reason is those black ratsnakes, the ones that have kept me unhealthily obsessed with the weather where I think they might be spending the winter - some likely den sites up in the mountains.

It makes no sense that I'd be trying another place when place is probably not the reason I'm striking out with ratsnakes: I'm hitting good spots up in the mountains; I'm probably just profoundly unlucky. Still, why hit my head against the same wall when I can try another wall?

So, east I went instead of north and west. Frank and I carpooled and got to the site a few minutes ahead of Chris. I flipped some boards I'd laid out last year and quickly turned up an adorable pair of fence lizards. These aren't easy for me to catch when they're warm, but when they're cool in the morning like this they're a lot easier to grab. Once in hand, whether hot or cold, I've found that fence lizards freeze up - probably from sheer terror.


I love their texture. I know that's a strange thing to say about a lizard, but their pointy scales make for a very rough feel, like something made of the bark and pine needles they call home.

The female is on the left, with the sharper and darker lines. The male on the right has the more orange pattern.

Female:


Male:

It's even easier to tell them apart when you flip them over to check their bellies. The male has blue patches on the sides, brighter than this in the breeding season, while the female's belly is just speckled with black:


When you put them down they stay still a moment, and I don't feel quite right (worried they'll get picked off by a hawk or something) until I tickle their tails to wake them up and get them to scurry off under cover again.

We struck off on a walking route for the next few hours, basically checking all the places Chris had ever seen ratsnakes or pine snakes (Pituophis melanoleucus) late in the season or early in the spring, trying to see if we could find a hibernaculum.

We had no luck, but we did come across a couple box turtles basking in the trails. It's never a bad day when you find a box turtle, even if no ratsnakes turn up. Finding two on the first day of November was truly a pleasure, even if I still haven't found any ratsnakes.