Salamanders are The Shit. 10-14-2018

I'm not gonna lie. It has been cold. On Sunday the 14th, it was going to be cool but the sun was supposed to come out. We decided to go check some snake dens to see if anyone would be peeking out, trying to catch some late-in-the-year rays. We chose a Copperhead spot. The problem was, the sun never actually came out.

We got there noonish and hit the trails. We didn't want to flip too many logs and delay our hike to the sunny spot where snakes could be. But we couldn't resist entirely. Our first sightings were Redbacks.


We would, in fact, see dozens of these little beauties on this day.

A much less common sight in Massachusetts is the Marbled Salamander, a a threatened species here. We were delighted to see this specimen.


We were downright surprised to see the next one, alongside a Redback and a Leadback!




So plentiful were Redbacks that a small log had seven under it, all of which had to be moved to replace the log properly. Here are 5 of them, being humiliated.

It was a very good salamander day, but where were the Spotteds?

Even though the sun hadn't come out, we still headed to the hill, intrepid idiots that we are.


We spent a little over an hour peeking into crevices and praying for sun but we never saw any snakes. We saw a Copper skin and Andrea saw a Racer skin, though.



To be honest, I wasn't feeling it. After a while, I sat on a rock and watched Andrea keep up the good fight. I admitted that I'd rather be down looking for salamanders. So we made our way down to the trail and carefully looked under some moist logs. First try, we got our Spotty!

But wait- Andrea saw another one under that log, too.

The maculatum twins!


Here's a Spotted Salamander wearing a Redback as a hat.


I'm not sure why we saw no Spotteds on our hike in because we were seeing plenty of them now.


Backs of red.


Spotted jammies.


Hiding but not well enough.


Right around now, I decided to put a moratorium on Spotted photos, which is a rarity.

Of course, that was the last one we saw.

But we did end with one more Marbled, making this a salamnderiffic day, for sure.

^ Somebody needs a bath.