So... Monday the 18th was very warm! 65°! But I had work. My friend Ryan found a Garter. He had the day off. I figured I would head over to my friend's house right after work and see if any of his Dekay's were up! They weren't. The stones were cold and the sun was going down by 4:30. I saw a few Redbacks, though. The first two walked away on me while I fiddled with the camera.
I did score two more who couldn't escape my speedy camera-work.
And that was that.
Meanwhile, Andrea and I were thinking about Spring Salamanders. Still. We made plans for a Saturday trip somewhere. We knew we had to travel a bit. Since we both slept in Saturday morning (Nov. 23rd), we decided to only travel as far as Worcester County... in fact, less than a mile from where we went last week.
Kinneywoods is on the Worcester/ Holden line and it has creeks running through it that look good for Springs. The sad thing is (again) that, despite heavy rains earlier in the week, the streams weren't running. Plus, the rocks were covered by leaves like last week. But man, the habitat is perfect!
Our first herp was a dark Redback who slowly crawled into a hole as we watched. We had forgotten to have our cameras ready. Oops.
True to form this year, we flipped some Two-Lineds while searching for the elusive Springs. I flipped these two:
This chubbasaurus was with eggs, but I didn't get a shot of her belly.
This guy was just gorgeous.
Meanwhile, Andrea found two as well. Her first was also in a family way and she was smart enough to take a picture!
Her next guy posed himself for this lovely shot.
We got together to herp in tandem as we had separated a bit too much for a minute there. We found this guy.
Andrea picked him up while I replaced the rock and got this charming shot:
We finally found another Redback! This massive beast, no matter how aggressive he was, was going to be photographed, or we would die trying!
The path crisscrossed a "creek", so we kept coming to wet spots. Still no Springs! Oops... go back to sleep, Señor Pickerel!
I ain't lyin'... it was damn cold. We had picked Saturday because it was going to be warmer (low 40s) but it has been a while since we subjected ourselves to this kind of weather. Plus, Andrea forgot her hat. So, we picked up the pace.
This place is littered with flippable stones and should be very snakey in the warmer climes. As it was we concentrated on sals. Like this squirmy Two-Lined.
This was our last animal, though we had many Two-Lineds hand us our asses.
But this place is great. Very well marked trails, tons of stone walls and creeks, plenty of flippable rocks; this place should be great when things warm up! I mean... look at this!
So we will definitely be hitting this place hard in the Spring. And maybe find some Springs. This should be an excellent place (along with Cascades) to hit up on those oppressive hot summer days. We can play in the water and it looks like the trail should be pretty shady when there are leaves on the trees.
By the way, since neither of us found the first Dookie (or any Dookie), lunch was Dutch Treat.
No comments:
Post a Comment