Snakeless in Taunton 8-6-11

Since it had been over a week, we were of course ACHING to get out and herp! So, we decided to go to Massasoit, where we'd had such good luck a month ago! Rising early didn't really happen, but we got up there by 11 AM.

Our first encounter was an avian friend... a, dare I say, Great Egret! It was hunting along the edge of the lake.



OK... there were boatloads of toads. Tiny ones. Should I just do a photo-show and not bother with cutesy verbage? OK!




Hey! That's not a toad! It seems Andrea did the impossible and caught a Wood Frog!


We decided that, with the abundance of tiny toads, that big hand/ tiny toad shots were getting old, so we thought we'd mix it up with nature shots or at least fake nature shots! Here's what we got...


OK... A for effort, eh?

We saw this weird grasshopper... Anyone know their bugs?


We got over to the "lake" that was turtle-centric on the last visit but to our surprise, was chelonian-free this time! Some Green Frogs gave us solace...



Birds were plentiful, like these ducks.


The stone wall that had given us 2 Ringnecks before held no snakes this time, but flipping did give us some surprises... like Toads!!



This guy was buried in sand up to his neck... under a heavy rock!


One rock held this treasure... Milk Snake eggs, we think.

Unfortunatly, they were dried up and not viable.

It should be noted that right around here, a huge (nearly 3 ft?) Garter Snake crawled right past us and deep into the wall before we knew what we were seeing. Oops. We dug for quite a while, but it was long gone. Beside ourselves, we were.

We explored around the pond further, finding new trails and herping spots. Zillions of tiny toads, but nothing there eating them. There were many tracks in the sand... little birdies dirty feet!


Some of those prints belonged to this fearless Sandpiper! He started singing folk music to us.


OK... the tiny toads were getting to be crazy... so many of them! So, we decided to make the giant hand/ tiny toad shots count!


I had about 11 in my hands at once, but when I opened my hands, they jumped out! This is the best we could do!



One the way back, I looked through the stone wall for a bit longer while Andrea caught a quick kip...


And looked cute...


We didn't get lost this time on the way out!! We also added one last hopping 'phib to our tally... a nice Pickerel Frog!

(Like our faux-nature shot here?)


So, in 5 1/2 hours, no snakes (except for... well, we wont mention him!), no turtles and no Salamanders! BUT, loads o' toads and enough frogs to satisfy us! We left happy!