We got up very early and hit the road at 6:30 AM, settling in for a 2 1/2 hour drive. We made it to the meet-up spot in Cummington, MA right on time!! Yay! My walnut bladder was well-behaved! We met our group, who were a great bunch of people; there were 10 of us total (including our leader Bruce and Elaine) and we hit the road to get to our spot. Our portion of the river was from about a mile up from our usual spot, down to the campground that we were familiar with.
We headed in and, after explaining and showing the safest way to flip rocks for salamanders, we set about gathering data. A nice woman named Susan struck first with a good-sized Two-Lined Salamander, the one species I could guarantee.
After that, the species became quite ubiquitous.
My only real contribution to this bislineata madness was a larvae, so we could compare this stage to the many adults we were seeing.
Some of the adults were fairly large.
Andrea broke the string of Two-Lines with a beautiful Green Frog!
I had hoped for a change of pace with some Northern Duskies but they never turned up in this part of the river. But the gorgeous Two-Lined Sals made up for their absence.
We realized that we were spending far too much of our allotted time in this one spot (so many rocks... so little time) so we headed down the road towards the old campground. On the way out, Andrea made a spectacular Redback flip... two normal phase and a coveted Erythristic phase!
We have marveled before at the ease with which we can find this rare color phase here along the river. We have speculated that it is natural selection; the erythristic gene gets passed on because those specimens survive. This color phase looks like the Red Eft phase of the Spotted Newt... a bright orange animal that is toxic to many predators.
Andrea also found our only American Toad, a charming fattie that really didn't want his picture taken! Patience paid off and I finally got a decent shot.
Finally down by the campsite, we all eagerly sought out herps. I can't believe I'm saying this, but we saw no Red Efts!! They are found all over this spot, but we struck out. As a "specialist", I wasn't feeling very special!! One of our crew, however, flipped another erythistic Redback.
Then I got one too.
Many more Two-lines were turned up and we finally flipped a very young Garter Snake.
Finally, a reptile representing!
Susan called me over to a shallow area on the side of the river (which, by the way, was extremely low. Small, enclosed "puddle" areas were all along the edge.) and asked what the creature was in there. It turned out that there were 4 or 5 sculpins in there! The largest one looked like this:
Time was coming to an end so I went off on a speed herping session to hit some of the wooded spots that were not yet looked at. I really wanted an Eft or a Pickerel Frog for the group... both are usually very easy to find here. I struck out on both. I managed a two species flip though, with two different colored Redbacks and a far-from-water Two-Lined.
Andrea got a couple more Redbacks of the normal color variety.
Here's another teeny Garter Snake, this time starting to go blue.
So, I was a bit disappointed to have not found many different species for our crew but we all had a lot of fun and we all learned something. Everyone had their strengths and were happy to share. We all met at the end back at a meet-up hall and exchanged data. It was a good day for everyone involved and a good day for the river. Many thanks to Meredyth, the person who organized the whole shebang! A huge job well done!
After saying our farewells, we went for ice cream and flipped the hell out of the walls behind the Creamery. We've seen many species back there (including Redbellied Snakes which we haven't seen any of this year!) but saw none this day. So, we drove back out and finally ended up at Notchview Reservation, still in Berkshire County. There was plenty to flip and plenty of trails, but we had to hurry... the shadows were getting long and we were still a long way from home.
Flipping produced nothing, not even a skin, but the trails had some frogs about. We heard Spring Peepers calling and got a shot of this gorgeous Pickerel Frog!
No other herps were spotted (pun not intended) but we saw some moose tracks! These look like they're from a big bull moose!
That's Andrea's size 7 for scale.
On the way out, we saw a family of Wild Turkeys grazing in the fading sun... a worthwhile way to end this exciting day.
Exhausted, we got home well after 9 PM to three cats who wondered where their 4:30 feeding was. Needless to say, we hit the hay and slept like the dead. We needed to get some sleep. After all, we were going right back out early Sunday morning!! As the herping season comes to an end in the Northeast, we will try and try and try to be productive for as long as possible.
I'm not ready for a month where my only herps are Two-Lined larvae. I hate the winter!
No comments:
Post a Comment