What Herpers do when it's cold. 1-11-15

Happy New Year. I have had flu symptoms for the entirety of 2015. It has been brutally cold of late, as in -2° for my drive in to work last Thursday. So, just what does a moronic herper do when it's too cold to herp?

Well, one thing I have done is enter a Bird Count Contest. I will surely lose but it gives me a chance to practice my bird skills and add to my life total. I ended 2014 with 112 species and figure I'll just add on new ones from there. So, we went out on New Year's Day to find some birds. I wanted to get a head start, and I wound up with 9 species, all repeats from last year.

I did, however, get my new Big Year started. I want to photograph and ID 30 mammals and, not surprisingly, #1 is an Eastern Gray Squirrel!


We had a couple more trips, including a rewarding sea-bird one with Teá, which got my contest totals up to 16, but illness has kept me from getting out more often. Plus, it has been bone-chillingly frigid out. But news of a rare bird at Forest Hills Cemetery got us bundled up and out the door in the chilly 23° temps on Saturday Jan. 10th. I added a few more common birds but the guest of honor, a Black-backed Woodpecker, was absent. We saw signs of his presence, however... like peeled tree bark:


and a fuck-ton of birders.

One guy had come up from Long Island, even.

We spent the afternoon freezing ourselves to death but Mr. Woodpecker wasn't following his schedule. We resigned ourselves to look again Sunday morning. Andrea took some pictures of stone-work at the cemetery. This one reminded us of the keeled scales of a serpent. One track minds...


We awoke with the reptile lights (well, the hungry cats really) on Sunday morning and decided to head over to the cemetery to see if our Pecker Pal was there early. We got there a bit after 7:30 AM and were immediately greeted by a group of birders (many of whom were there yesterday) pointing their cameras up into the trees. I followed suit.


Now, we never got any great shots but it's nice to finally see the fruits of our patience and cold feet. This is our lifer #113, the Black-backed Woodpecker.



I feel 3 pictures isn't so bad to put here as I'll probably never see one again!

So, we were chuffed with our success and headed over to Allandale Woods for a shot at our first herps of the year. The plan was to drag our icy bodies over to a familiar stream (if it was in fact still running) and dip-net some Two-Lined Salamander larvae for a photo, then head home and warm up. Unfortunately, we couldn't find our dip net! It seems I had lost it after our last outing (also at Allendale, on Dec. 28th). Oh well, it wasn't going to be as comfy or easy as planned, but we went in anyway.

I was kneeling into the stream (yay, new fleece-lined pants!) with a holder but couldn't find anything. I heard Andrea squeeee and I turned to see that she had found our net next to the stream!! Two weeks in the wilderness and it was back home with us!! We immediately dipped a net full of Two-Lined Salamander larvae!


Yay! First herps of 2015! Satisfied, we wrapped it up and headed back to the car. Just how cold was it? The wet net had frozen immediately.


But we had accomplished our mission.


Upon returning to the car, our frozen bodies found out why they had became that way... it was only 15° outside!! Damn!


So, while we await our trip to the Everglades, we have some January herps under our belts and a good start to the bird year. Now, I just have to get my damn health back to its usual 75%!

The last weekend of 2014

The temps have been unseasonably mild. It has been rainy, not snowy... warm, not cold. So while we wouldn't be finding any reptiles, there has been no reason to forgo looking for amphibians. So we headed over to Ponkapoag on Saturday afternoon (December 27th) to get some exercise and take a look around. It was in the high 40s when we got there.

Deciding to dig right in, we hit a quietly running stream and flipped a few rocks. Let us all praise the dip-net; we had two species in one wave of the wand; a sleepy Pickerel Frog and a wee (and I mean very wee) Two-lined Salamander larvae!



More larvae turned up in the area, like this netted mini-sausage.


We checked on some vernal ponds along the way, which seem to be holding their water nicely. We encountered a few Redbacks under our more successful log-flips.




The pond was quiet and beautiful, as was this naturalist that was photographing it.


Here's her shot!


We got to a favorite stream and were hoping to find an adult Two-lined Salamander to photograph before we left. We surprised a slumbering Green Frog instead.

This guy was good for teaching a young girl who was walking by with her family a little bit about stream "aminals" (yes, the dear thing actually said that!) and their habits.

I finally found an adult Two-line and got my favorite Salamander picture of the year.

Thank you, new camera!

We had no plans for Sunday, the 28th. In fact, Andrea had already committed to a knitting meet-up. But when our dear friend Teá asked if we wanted to look for salamanders with her for her birthday (the 28th), how could I refuse such a wonderful offer? I hoofed it over to Allandale Woods while Andrea was at knitting and met up with Teá and her boyfriend Mike for some 'mandering.

It took a while to strike red gold, but eventually, we saw this Redback!

This is a big fat, probably gravid, gal.

We heard from Andrea on the way to the Two-lined stream... she would be there soon. We found a larvae quickly enough...


We figured that, since we'd bepulling up many larvae, we'd hold them all together for Andrea to see and also, we wouldn't have a dozen photographs of single Two-lined larvae. It started to become crazy as we turned up a plethora of Eurycia! We even found two adults. This is what 16 larvae and two adult Two-Lined Salamanders looks like!

I call that a beautiful bowl of bislineata!

So while we await the spring, the real warm weather, and the return of reptiles, our Phibtastic Phriends will keep us dirty and wet and sweaty... the signs of herpers herping.

Respite from Holiday Madness. Christmas Eve and Christmas.

While some folks are upset by not having a white Christmas this year, we saw it as more of an unexpected gift. Rainy and mid Forties on Christmas Eve meant possible salamanders to us! We headed over to Brook Farm for a quick walk amid the holiday carnage. While we always hope for Ambystoma, we were thrilled to find a couple of Redbacks on December 24th.

Well, 1 1/2 anyway... that guy on the left hardly counts as a full one! I thought I had been responsible for the breaking of his tail because I saw some movement behind him, but then it crawled off. It was a centipede.

Even completely bundled, Andrea is so cute!


Christmas Day was even warmer... low 50s and the sun had even popped out. We went back to Brook thinking that a dumb Garter Snake was even possible in the balmy weather. Well, no... but we got three more Redbacks and they are our first ever Christmas Day herps!

^ Nice Fu Manchus going on...



Those pics were all with my "old" Nikon. But Andrea spoiled me good with a Nikon P600 for Christmas so, on December 26th (Friday), I took a cold morning swing by Forest Hills cemetery at 8 AM to try out that 60X zoom! There were a dozen Hooded Mergansers staying far away from me and they made the perfect test subjects.

Not too shabby!

This heron (GBH!) was on the shore as well...


So, yes... I think that this camera and I will become very good friends indeed!

Dookie Queen for a Day! 12-10-2014

We weren't sure about herping last weekend. It's winter, fer chrissake! But our friend Teá wondered if we wanted to go look for Northern Dusky Salamanders and we're never one to turn down a Dookie! We all decided that, since we'd have to drive at least an hour to get to Dookie Country anyway, we might as well double it and do some Mudpuppy recon in Western MA. There is an introduced population in and around the Connecticut River and we've been researching it and trying to pinpoint an area that would support these brutes. By the way, they have been here for 200 years now so introduced or not, they are part of our state's herps... so there!

So we headed out at about 9:30 and got to our destination in Franklin County, MA around 11:30 AM. Our goal was to visit a DCR place, look at maps and try to learn some more. And we did just that. We had a very helpful DCR staff member to talk with and she gave us some great tips, including volunteering next Fall when the nearby canal gets drained. They need folks to corral the 'puppies and fish. We are so there! She also pointed out a path that got us to the river's edge! Bingo!! We dared not dream! So, down we went!

Somewhere beneath this tumultuous surface, there are Mudpuppies!

We got to some more serene waters, just off the side of the main river flow so we set about some flipping. Mudpuppy larvae was always a possibility, though we never found one.



We found many Crayfish.



We all worked our way through very clear, thick ice at times.



The most ubiquitous creature living under the rocks were these aquatic isopods (so said Teá... I was calling them "little grey guys").


We had a very good look around, knowing that a Mudpuppy larvae could be under any rock but we never turned one up. So, we headed over to Mt. Toby in hopes of our goal... Northern Dusky Salamanders. Of course, on the way, we asked if Teá wanted to play the Dookie Game... first one to find one gets lunch bought for them. In a three-person game, the last person to find one would have to buy for the other two. The game was, once again... afoot!

Well, she showed us who was boss right away. There in the icy stream water, with an air temp in the mid-30s, she found her Dookie!


We felt swindled. Surely she played us!!

I had a Two-Line hand me my ass right after that. But clearing some leaves dislodged a skinny Pickerel Frog from his nap. He didn't look too pleased with me.


We moved further on and we got our Two-Lined Salamander revenge!


Teá found the next Pickerel, hibernating in plain sight, underwater in the shadow of a large overhanging rock.


I was upstream desperately trying to find a Dookie when I heard them call from below... she had just found a hibernating Green Frog!

Hey, we had four species on December 20th!! Hot darn!

Andrea discovered a successful way to herp in a rapidly moving stream (which it was): Set the dip net in the current and flip a rock. This beautiful Two-Lined larvae was pulled out in this manner.


This technique also worked wonders with this wee guy:

There's just no way anyone would have seen this 1/2 inch of Two-Lined Salamander larvae with the naked eye!


Admittedly, by this time our hands were numb and frozen and we were wet and dirty. We turned back, satisfied with our victories! I tried Andrea's dip net strategy a couple of more times on the way out and got a nice Two-Lined larvae and a small adult.



So, we crowned Teá Dookie Queen of the Day and Andrea and I both had to split the lunch tab. Luckily, she didn't take advantage of us. But it is only fitting as Teá was the person responsible for getting us up and out on this frigid Saturday! And we consider it a rousing success on every front. New Mudpuppy info and four herp species in late December! If it is the last day we get out into the field in 2014 (it hopefully wont be), then it is a fine ending to a frustrating but memorable year.