Our friends had us up for a nice hang Friday night and their yard, despite the chill, got us a beautiful October Dekay's Snake!
This has been a very dry season , but we had been getting some rain for three days. This gave us high hopes for Ambystoma during the short time we had for Saturday herping. We had family stuff in the afternoon, so we went over to a spot close to home, in Suffolk County. Unfortunately, it was about 59°. We figured salamanders wouldn't mind. Sure enough, Andrea found a couple of lovely Blue-Spotted Salamanders.
While she was successful in finding mole salamanders, I had the lungless luck... Redbacks.
We is what we is and we couldn't resist peeking under a few stones up on a rock strewn path. Just the low-hanging fruit, mind you. Surprisingly, it paid off... a beautiful young Garter was coiled up under one!
A further rock got me my wish... an October Nerodia!
While we were photographing this total sweetheart (never nipped and only musked a tad), we were talking to an older guy that had seen one (and he'd called it... a Northern Water Snake) further back on the path... he said it was basking. Tough snake indeed, because it stillwasn't too warm at all! We hoped it would still be there when we got there.
Well, it was... but we weren't sure if it was even alive! It looked kind of skinny and dead-eyed.
But upon closer inspection (and since it moved away), we decided that it was very much alive... just in need of a shed and some chow. She looked a bit deflated, like she'd just dropped some babies... even though that should have happened a month ago.
So, in about 2 1/2 hours of cool weather walking, we saw some herps. Take that, October!!!
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