Armchair Ticks

   

Black Chinned Sparrow

   For those of you that don't know what an armchair tick is let me explain. As many of you know, birders keep all kinds of lists. Lets say you've seen one hundred species of birds. Every year, the ABA ( American Birding Association) looks at the latest science and decides if a species may actually be two different species. Sometimes there is evidence that a bird has evolved differently from one location and is a totally different species. While a bird may look very similar it could have a different song or habits. If DNA confirms that there is enough of a difference than the ABA could decide that what we thought was one species is really two different species. If you have seen both of these populations in your hundred species, you get to add one and now you are at one hundred and one.

   This recently happened with Meadowlarks as my friend Scott told me. The Eastern Meadowlark was split into two. While there still is an Eastern Meadowlark, there is now a Chiricahua Meadowlark. The latter bird lives in the southwest from western Oklahoma to central Arizona. Scott had previously seen this bird in that range. So when the species was split, he got to add it to his lifelist without leaving his couch. Hence the name "armchair tick". Tick would be another term for checkmark or mark to identify you have seen the bird. 

   Another example of an armchair tick would be when the ABA allows a previously unallowable bird to be counted. Lets say someone lets there pet parrot free in Miami or one escapes. If I'm driving through Miami I can not count it because it is not a wild bird. I can not count a parrot that was raised by humans anymore than I can count a chicken in someone's back yard, it is not a wild bird. But say many parrots escape and they start breeding. Now they are not domestic birds, they are wild born. After a number of years, I believe twenty five, if that population is self sustaining then the ABA will announce that the bird can be counted. So if I were driving through Miami on my 2019 vacation and I saw that parrot species and in 2022 they announced it is countable, I get to add to my list without leaving my chair, hence...armchair tick.

 

Longnose Leopard Lizard

     All of my birder friends keep lists. The ones that travel can't wait to find out if the ABA split any species so they can add a bird to their lifelist. I know a few nature lovers that keep a dragonfly and butterfly list, but beyond that, I know a couple that keeps track of  herps they have seen. I know very few that keep track of much other than that. The best example of someone that does is my friend Charles.  He seems to keep a list of everything from Damselflies to Mammals. 

   Until this year I had my bird lists which are only in two categories, birds I've seen in RI (on ebird) and total birds (in a notebook). I have a half hearted butterfly list. Last year I kept a list of herps I saw in 2022 and this year I have done the same.  That was until this weekend.

   This week I put together my life list of fish. That in itself is worthy of its own blogpost for another time. I also decided to figure out how many species of herps I had seen before. This was pretty tough. I'd gone on vacations to Florida and North Carolina in the last few years. I took photos of pretty much anything that sat still long enough. If a lizard wanted me to take a photo I was happy to oblige. I never gave them much thought after I got home.

   In North Carolina I took a lot of reptile photos but I'm attracted to megafauna. So I'll take hundreds of photos of a Black Bear and forget to ID a turtle. When I got home from North Carolina I actually did pretty well with getting ID's of my lizards but didn't get too many turtles identified. 

   Much more of a problem was my vacation in 2010. DJ and I went all over the west. I snapped photos of everything. With over three thousand photos after deleting the blurry ones, there was a lot to go through.

 

Peters Rock Agama, Florida Keys

   Which is exactly what I did on Friday night. I was alone and had the night to myself. So I started looking for photos of all of the herps I had seen this year and put them in a folder so I could make prints. Then I decided to go through my Florida photos. I found three lizard species and a snake species that I did not know the identity of.  I also found the turtles from North Carolina and put them in the folder. 

   Next I tackled 2010. The job wasn't as bad as you'd expect. I didn't have any lizards until I reached Utah. I didn't have to go through my photos from Yellowstone or the Grand Tetons. However, we covered a lot of ground in the southwest. We went to the Grand Canyon, three Utah national parks, Flaming Gorge Dam, and two national monuments. It did take me a couple of hours to find all my herp photos. I tried to get positive IDs of the reptiles but did a piss poor job. 

  The following morning I posted the lizard pics of a reptile Facebook Group. I posted the snake from Florida on a Snake group and the turtles on a Turtle Identification group (who knew?). To my surprise, all of the species were identified. The snake was a Peninsular Ribbon Snake. All of the turtles were in the slider family but I had seen those species before. The lizards were all identified for me by a real reptile expert out west. I thanked everyone that was kind enough to help me out.

   All in all, I had thirteen species identified (not including the turtles) that I previously did not know what they were. In a stroke of a pen, I got thirteen armchair ticks!!! Needless to say, I was on cloud nine all day on Saturday. I am going to get prints of all the herps I have photos of including the species from these trips and make an album the way I do for birds. 

Sidenote- one of the thirteen armchair ticks was a bird. I found a photo of a species I saw in Utah and asked Scott what it was. It is a Black Chinned Sparrow a very handsome bird. 

Not that anyone cares but the previously unidentified species are:

Black Chinned Sparrow (bird, Utah)

Florida

Green Anole (was pretty sure but wanted confirmation), Brown Anole, Northern Curly Tail Lizard, Peters Rock Agama, Peninsular Ribbon Snake

Utah

Long Tailed Leopard Lizard, Side Blotched Lizard, Ornate Tree Lizard, Common Sagebrush Lizard, Western Whiptail, Plateau Striped Whiptail, Plateau Fence Lizard 

Peninsula Ribbon Snake

Finding White Perch on Memory Lane

   Today I went fishing in the hopes of finding an old favorite. I could not waste this absolutely gorgeous eighty degree fall day. I headed out onto Norton Reservoir armed with my trout rod, small jigs and small shad bodies. As an adult, when I fished everyday, if I went through a slump with big fish (Carp, Largemouth Bass or Stripers) I'd go to Norton Reservoir and catch thirty or more fish and get my confidence back. 

    When I was young we would stay at a cabin an hour from Acadia National Park in Maine. The cabin was on a lake that was nine miles long named Toddy Pond. The pond was full of White Perch. We could catch them in "Deep Hole" from the boat during the day and they would come into shore almost every night. I'd catch them along with Fallfish and Eels from the dock until I couldn't see. More than any other fish, I have fond, and somewhat complicated, White Perch memories from my childhood.

   

   We would stay at this cabin for two weeks in August every year. My parents, myself, my brother, and my parent's best friend Art (we called him Beezy because he got into a fight with a hive of bees as a kid and the nickname stuck) would go. I was addicted to fishing. I'd spend almost every moment in the canoe or boat fishing. My parents and Beezy loved playing cards. They played high-low-Jack and they played partners. I never got into it despite being fairly good at the game.  This left my brother who is three years younger than me to be someone's partner. Many nights I'd have my mom annoyed at me that I didn't want to play. But oh well, there were fish to catch.

  After many years of catching White Perch in Maine we put the boat into Norton Reservoir. It was loaded with perch and I would keep a few to eat. Sidenote- do not eat fish out of Norton Reservoir. It is polluted. Raw sewerage used to be dumped in there. They were stunted and unlike in Maine where I'd occasionally catch one thirteen inches, the Norton ones were never bigger than eight inches. In one of our first encounters with these fish I kept a few and put them in the net which we left in the water. I probably had eight or ten. My mom reeled in what she thought was a log until she went to pull it out of the water. The "log" was a monster bass. Easily eight pounds! Instead of waiting for me to try to lip it or for us to empty the contents of the net she tried to lift it out of the water snapping her line. She handled the loss well, but blamed me for having the net full of fish. Once grown and with a few big fish under my belt I realized this was her fault not mine. Who tries to lift a giant bass out of the water with their little freshwater rod?   

   After years of only catching White Perch in Maine and Norton Reservoir my parents bought the boat off of Beezy and I could keep it docked on Falls Pond at a family friend's house. The walk to his house was about ninety seconds. I lived out there. I was on the water almost every day. I learned how to bass fish out there and how to use lures. For my eighth grade graduation gift I was offered a small family party or fifty dollar gift. I bought fifty dollars worth of lures from Bass Pro Shops that were mail order at the time. We still went up to Maine the difference was we were trailering the boat instead of Beezy. 

   When I was about fifteen, the day after we came home from our annual Maine vacation, I was talking to a fishermen that was coming in off of Falls Pond. I asked him what he caught and he told me a few bass and White Perch. I'd fished Falls Pond my whole life and I had never caught a White Perch. I was sure he didn't know the true identity of what he caught. However, I was also secretly excited that I might have perch in the pond. Sure enough the next day when I got my boat back int the water I caught my first ever Falls Pond White Perch. I'd caught hundreds of fish from Falls Pond, how I had never caught a White Perch until that day is mathematically impossible. 

   A couple weeks later I caught a Falls Pond White Perch that was about fifteen inches. This is huge for a freshwater White Perch. I took it home and had it weighed at a local tackle shop. It was big enough to qualify for a state pin. Later that week as I was reading the outdoor column, which I read religiously, I read my name in the paper. There was a paragraph with my name and my catch. We bought multiple copies that afternoon.

    My last White Perch memory isn't about catching one. Fast forward twenty years I was fishing in Providence almost every winter night when the weather was warm enough. There had been a lot of sea-run White Perch around but I hadn't hooked up with one (Dave, if you are reading this, you probably already know where I'm going with this). The fish were much bigger than the stunted perch normally caught in lakes. I was determined to catch one so I left my striper gear in the car and used my trout rod. I put on a small jig with a small shad body. I didn't mind that I wouldn't catch any stripers with this gear, I really wanted to catch a White Perch. It was a rainy but warm, for a winter night. Dave had gotten there before me and had caught a few stripers that night. After only a couple minutes I hooked up but it was definitely not a perch. My medium-light freshwater rod bent over.

   When my drag started screaming Dave said, and I quote, "the fish are running big tonight". He was right. I had an epic battle on my hands. While I was fighting this big fish on six pound line Dave hooked up also. It took me twenty minutes to get the fish in but somehow landed a thirty one inch striper. Dave unhooked his fish and we set up my small camera on a timer and somehow it took a magical photo. The photo is in the top right hand corner of the blog. It has been featured in magazines twice. It is hanging on my wall. It is, by far, my favorite fishing photo of my life. While, this story isn't about White Perch, it is because I was chasing them.

   A good sized freshwater White Perch is a foot long, and a fifteen inch fish will make the paper if you are a kid. Since my childhood I've caught tons of Stripers that could eat a White Perch and still be hungry. I've gotten close to the elusive thirty pound carp. But every now and then, I go back. When an eight inch perch comes out of the water it reminds me of my childhood every time. All of these memories come back. Without White Perch my Maine vacations would not have been nearly as fun. I don't know what I would have done with those hundreds of hours I spent on Toddy Pond drowning worms and catching perch. Even worse, the evenings would have been spent playing cards!

Yellow Perch

A decent sized Pumpkinseed Sunfish

 

Black Crappie. Just a glorious day

Very cool stops in the Midwest

   

   We knew that the Gateway Arch, Hannibal, Snake Road, and Matt's house would be focal points on our trip. There were other things we did that required far less time. A couple of things were planned (Kankakee Sands and Blue Springs Cavern) while others were spur of the moment (US Grant Historic Site). The things below are all things I would highly recommend even though we never spent more than four hours at any of them. Each has a paragraph or two followed by some photos before you scroll to the next place.

   Kankakee Sands Nature Conservancy

   While the Gateway Arch was our first true destination, I drove all night on Thursday to put us close to Kankakee Sands so we could spend few hours there on Friday. This six thousand acre prairie in NW Indiana is owned by the Nature Conservancy. They did a great job converting ten square miles of farmland back to prairie. The main attraction is a bison herd of about 93 animals. They roam a square mile. There is a fence that separates you from them and they can be anywhere so your chances of seeing them vary depending on where they are. We got lucky and most of the herd was near the dirt road running along the fence line. I took photos for fifteen minutes.

  Next we took a hike in the prairie. I was hoping to find some grassland birds but I knew the odds were slim. It was mid-afternoon on a ninety degree day and many species had already headed south. I never ended up seeing any of my targets. Still, I loved walking in the prairie If I were passing through I'd go again.

There was Prickly Pear along the trail

Eurasian Tree Sparrow

   St Louis has a small population of the Eurasian Tree Sparrows. As the name suggests they are native across the pond. They were released and instead of reeking havoc such as invasive House Sparrows and Starlings, they have only a small population that is struggling to survive. Their range is a small neighborhood in St Louis called Dogtown and the adjacent park. I researched them and found an intersection where they were seen at a bird feeder.

 

   After the Gateway Arch we drove to Dogtown before heading to Hannibal. We parked near the intersection I read about. They weren't right there but we walked up and down the suburban roads and found a couple of the sparrows within a half hour. Two of them were in a tree in a yard. While I was photographing them an old man with a bad limp and a cane came out and asked me what I was doing. I told him he had a rare bird in the tree. When I said that he just shrugged because he was used to people looking at the birds. We talked for a minute and he drove off. 

The Eurasian Tree Sparrow was the one bird I got as a lifer on the trip.

US Grant National Historic Site

 

 As we were driving from Hannibal to Snake Rd we saw a brown sign for the Ulysses S Grant National Historic Site. I had Laurie Google it really quick and it was only nine minutes off of the highway. As much as I wanted to get to Snake Road, I couldn't pass up going to the home of our greatest general not named Washington. 

 

    The home, named White Haven, was where Grant met his wife Julia while we was stationed a few miles away while in the army. After they married Julia's father fell on hard times (he was a Southern sympathizer) so the Grant's bought up much of the property. Grant lived here in the years between when he left the military and when the Civil War started and he rejoined. 

   The house is the same gaudy color as when Grant lived there. The cement stairs leading you in are original to the house. Meaning you can step exactly where US Grant stepped. This fact was not lost on me and I took multiple photos of my feet on the steps. 

   There is an excellent visitor center with a twenty minute movie about Grant's life. Grant struggled during civilian life but was a masterful general. He became the 18th president. His  administration had multiple scandals. Though Grant was innocent of any wrongdoing he trusted too much and many of his friends that he gave positions to took advantage and tried to make a quick buck. During his administration Grant fought hard for the rights of black people. 

 
We spent a little over an hour at the Grant NHS. The place was easily worth another couple of hours. We only toured the house. We didn't walk the grounds. The museum was excellent but all we did was look at artifacts. We read very little abut his life. Yet I learned a lot. The video and the ranger that lead the tour were very informative. I'm very happy we took the detour before heading off to find venomous snakes.

Blue Springs Caverns, Bedford, IN

 

Blind Cavefish

   Between Snake Road and Akron, OH we went to Blue Springs Caverns in Bedford, IN. Blue Springs Caverns is the longest navigable cave in the world. There is a navigable river that goes for miles. You can take a one hour boat tour that explores a small percentage of the cave. We arrived for the 1 pm tour and we were the only people on it (though they did have a group of ninety school kids earlier in the day). My friend Charles suggested we go to this cave because Blind Cavefish and pure white crayfish live in the water. The cave is completely dark (minus when they turn the lights on) so animals lose their pigment. The boat ride through the cave was amazing. None of the photos I took can possibly do it any justice. We did see multiple Blind Cavefish and crayfish and even got a couple blurry photos of the Blind Cavefish

Rest Area Grey Tree Frog

   We spent two full nights at rest areas and a few hours one morning so I could get some sleep before heading to Kankakee Sands. The Friday night before heading to St Louis there was a Grey Tree Frog in a bubbler outside the restroom building. It was green but upon reading about them, Grey Tree Frogs can be green but you can tell it is a Grey because of a light spot under the eye no matter what color the rest of the body is. Since I had nowhere else to write about it, I figure leaving it here at the end of my writing journey though I saw it at the beginning of my trip seems appropriate.

Cuyahoga Valley National Park

 

Brandywine Falls
The busiest part of the park

   After Snake Road we planned two and a half days to make it to Matt's house on Saturday night. After spending a day on Snake Rd we decided to use our extra day as a third day there. However, that day (Thursday) was raining. So instead of wasting it we decided to use the rainy day as a travel day. We left southern Illinois and headed through Indiana (stopping at a cavern) and continued into Ohio. We drove almost twelve hours in the miserable rain. It worked out because it got us close to Akron. We slept in the car Thursday night. This gave us a travel free Friday. We chose to go to Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

   Cuyahoga Valley is one of the newest national parks. It was designated in 2000. It is 32,000 acres which would be small for a western park. It became a national park to give the east one more. It is kind of an urban park because the citizens of Cleveland and Akron are only thirty minutes away. It is somewhat wild though. There are waterfalls, beaver marshes, and 125 miles of hiking trails.

   I knew what to expect when we decided to spend the day at CVNP. It was going to feel like "the country" but not a true wilderness like you'd get at Yellowstone. There would be pretty scenes worthy of a postcard but wouldn't take your breathe away. This is exactly what the park ended up being. Spending the day was a nice relaxing way to kill a day before heading to Matt's house.

   The first thing we did was go to the main visitor center. We picked up a map of the park. Our goal was to see as much of it as we could. This did mean we wouldn't make any ten mile hikes. We hit as many scenic areas that we could either roadside or via short hikes. At the VC we ran across a ranger that told us the busiest part of the park was a waterfall named Brandywine Falls. Since it was early we should go there before it got busy. Since she was heading there anyway she had us follow her. Once parked, it was a short walk to a very impressive falls. There are three different vantage points to see it from. We went to all three but the observation deck easily had the best view.

 

A view from the Ledges Trail

   The park runs north to south and is very thin east to west. North to south it is probably twenty miles while it is less than a half mile in some places east to west. There is a main route going the length of the park top to bottom. After the falls we decided to head to the southern point and work our way north hitting all of the points of interest. There was a beaver pond in the southern half that is known for wildlife from birds to otters. I was hoping to see frogs and snakes but in the morning it was a raw fifty degrees, cloudy and breezy, so I knew snakes weren't going to be out and about. We stopped at the pond and saw some Wood Ducks and Mallards but all was quiet. If it got sunny later we would go back.

    One of the few things I actually wanted to do at the park was walk part of the towpath. The path parallels the Cuyahoga River and the Ohio/ Erie Canal. The canal is historic. It was used to transport goods before railroads. The path runs most of the length of the park. I just wanted to walk a small scenic portion of it. The trail to the beaver pond goes along the towpath. We walked past the pond along the edge of the canal for a short while so I got my fix.

 

Ohio and Erie Towpath

   Most of the day was spent traveling to different ponds and viewpoints. There are multiple roadside ponds where you can picnic or use a bathroom. Mostly we'd get out of the car walk to a pond, take a photo, try to scare up a frog, and move on.

   There is an area outside the national park boundary but still touching the park called the Bedford Reservation that is maintained by the Cleveland Parks Dept that has two waterfalls and an overlook. We drove up there and had lunch at a picnic area. After lunch we walked down to the two waterfalls. They each had their own trailhead so he had to drive between them. They were short walks from the car but well worth the drive and short hike.

   The best hike we did inside the park was the Ledges Trail. The ledges are a large rock formation I'm sure was cut out of the hill by glaciers. You can walk to the top of the ledges and look down but the best views are when we walk at the bottom of the hill and look at them. They are really impressive. There are mini canyons cut out. There is a cave closed to the public to protect bats. The scenery is very pretty and I was blown away by the geology.

   Later in the day it did clear up so we went back to the Beaver Marsh. We saw a Northern Watersnake and two turtles. One turtle was a Midland's Painted Turtle. This is a subspecies of Painted Turtles so not a new species for me. The other was a Red Eared Slider. We saw some frogs but they jumped in the water before we could ID them. There were some very accommodating Wood Ducks. Laurie was hoping to see an Otter but no luck. Still, it was well worth going back to the swamp for a second time.

   

Great Falls in the Bedford Reservation

   All in all, our day at Cuyahoga National Park was very rewarding. We saw three waterfalls. We did a hike along some really cool ledges. For wildlife we saw deer, a Northern Watersnake, two turtle species, Wood Ducks, and some common birds. We hit multiple small ponds and had a picnic. While CVNP was never on my bucket list, I am glad we went. Driving all day Thursday in the rain allowed us to go visit this park I never would have visited. After leaving the park we got a motel and had a relaxing night with pizza. It was only a four hour drive to Matt and Susan's house on Saturday morning and the scenery driving through western Pennsylvania made the drive really pleasant anyway.

I believe this was Bridal Veil Falls

A covered bridge in the park

The cave along the Ledges Trail 
closed to protect bats

Wood Ducks and the Red Eared Slider

Midland's Painted Turtle

Elk and the PA Wilds

   

This bull was surprisingly tender. It is doubtful the calf is his.

    Though we were in no hurry to come home, we were looking forward to our last full day of our trip. We were going to spend Sunday with my friends Matt and Susan Schenck. Matt is one of the most hardcore birders I know. He used to live in Rhode Island but moved back to his home state of Pennsylvania during Covid. When Matt moved I asked him if he lived near the elk herd and he instantly sent me a photo of one. He also told me if I ever wanted to visit after Covid was over I was more than welcome. I remembered that invite.  When we decided on this trip, I asked Matt if we could crash at his house and look for elk. Matt was happy to have us.

   We got to Matt's on Saturday night and the three of us walked to a pizza place and got some great pizza. Susan had to work. She is a ranger at a state park (so is Matt, but at a different park) where she does astronomy programs after dark. Matt took off Sunday and Susan had it off. So they lead us around north-central PA.

 

   The goal was to see a bull elk. Both Laurie and I had seen plenty of elk in national parks, but had never seen one in the fall after they rubbed the velvet off of their antlers. I really wanted a "perfect" photo of a big bull elk. 

 

 Besides looking for elk, Matt wanted to show us around what is called the PA Wilds. This area of Pennsylvania is two million acres of state wild land. This huge state owned forest is divided up into state parks and multiple state forests but it is all contiguous. To put how large this forest is into perspective, the White Mountains of New Hampshire are eight hundred thousand acres. Usually large chunks of land this size are owned by the federal government, The only other huge chunk of state forest I know that is this large is the Adirondacks. If we found a bull elk, Matt was going to show us overlooks, waterfalls, and of course...birds.

   Finding elk did not take long. Matt had seen some elk the day before on his way to work. They were in the same place. Though they were pretty far away there was a big male along with a couple small males. Just up the road, Susan spotted a big bull right near the road. She pulled over and we got out and watched it for thirty minutes. It was in a swamp and it always seemed to have one twig or piece of grass in front of its face. Finally it moved a few feet and I discovered there was a baby and a cow elk. The big bull licked the baby gently. I was not expecting that. After we got our fill we moved on.

  The Schencks drove us up some long forest roads to a trailhead to a waterfall. It was about a mile walk but despite the dry weather in their area it was really pretty. We also stopped at a couple of overlooks and lakes. We ended up seeing a couple good birds. We had Bald Eagles, Lesser Scaup, and Pectoral Sandpipers among others. 

   On our way back to their house we saw some more elk. Throughout the day we saw far more big bulls than I would have hoped for. Hanging out with Matt and Susan was a great way to spend our last real vacation day.  

   While this post may just be my memories from a great day, I can tell you that there is a lot to explore in the PA Wilds. Elk viewing is a multi million dollar tourist industry in that area. There is an elk viewing driving route. There are multiple state parks with top notch visitor centers where you can get info on elk, trails, and more. There is a town named Benezette that is the "elk capitol of PA". There you can get all the info on elk and probably see some right in town. You will almost certainly see deer just about everywhere. With a little research, you will not need someone to show you where to look for elk. Also, with two million acres of forest, the scenery is great. There are overlooks, waterfalls, and ponds. 

More photos below

Matt and Susan without me

That's better

Laurie, Susan, and the waterfall

Our first big male

A young male without branches is called a Spike

My best elk photo was probably of this calf

It's momma

The last big bull we saw.

Snake Road, IL

 

There's a reason they are called Cottonmouth

   While this won't be the longest post, going to Snake Road was the focal point of our vacation. If we hadn't learned about Snake Road a few months ago I suspect we wouldn't have gone on this trip. 

  Snake Road is a forest service road in the Shawnee National Forest. It is only a few miles from the Mississippi River in extreme southwestern Illinois. It is the only road in the United States closed to vehicles due to snake migration. On one side of the road is a large swamp. On the other side are limestone bluffs. The snakes hibernate in the bluffs during the winter and live in the swamp during the rest of the year.   During the fall, the road is closed to all wheeled traffic from September 15-October 31. People are allowed to walk the road and look for snakes.

   The main species of snake seen on Snake Road are Cottonmouths. I bought a book about Snake Road. The author walked the road one hundred times during all weather conditions during spring and fall. He saw 1500 Cottonmouths and just over 900 of all the other species combined. There are about twenty five species that have been observed on Snake Road, but realistically there are only ten species you could see if you walked the road multiple times. The other species are just too rare and they only get seen every few years. 

 

Armadillo

   Unfortunately for us, it was hot. The temperature our two days was almost ninety degrees. This is not the temperature that will get snakes to think about hibernating. Snake Road is 2.7 miles one way or 5.4 miles round trip from your car. It was a four hour drive from Hannibal, MO so we walked it once on day one and I walked it twice on day two. Combined I did about sixteen miles of herping. 

   I knew I'd see at least one Cottonmouth but was also hoping to see some species I'd never seen before. I'd done my homework and learned about the snakes we could see. I was hoping for any lifer but a Timber Rattlesnake and a Rough Green Snake were reasonable possibilities. I ended up seeing one Green Snake. The most common snake that isn't a Cottonmouth is the Plain Bellied Watersnake which I saw one. This was also a lifer.

    All in all, I saw the Cottonmouths and two other species of snake. I saw a Plain Bellied Watersnake and just the head of a baby Rough Green Snake. Besides the snakes I got a Cave Salamander and Green Tree Frog as lifers. I also caught a newt in my hand which I'm told is an Eastern Newt but I'm not so sure. 

 

   One photo I really wanted was of a Cottonmouth with its mouth open warning people not to get any closer. While most of the Cottonmouths did not do this, as you can see, I had one that was willing to show me the inside of its mouth. 

  The coolest non-reptile I saw was an Armadillo. They have become common in southern Illinois. I had no idea they were there but others saw one also. Laurie found three Racoons. We also saw a crayfish that I think is a Red Swamp Crayfish based on photos I found online.

   While  herping wasn't great, it was still pretty good. I asked everyone I walked by if they saw anything. There were only two other species of snakes seen that I didn't see. One was a Western Ribbon Snake and the other was an endangered species called a Mississippi Green Watersnake. So I can't complain. 

  While I can't complain, I know I will go back. Next time hopefully there will be cooler weather. As I write this, a week after I went, the weather is perfect to see snakes. Since I left, they have had rain followed by cold nights and sunny seventy degree days. This is perfect weather to get snakes out sunning and migrating. I can't wait to go there again.

Green Tree Frog

My total was 

16 Cottonmouths, a Rough Green Snake, a Plain Bellied Watersnake,  3 Green Tree Frogs, Cave Salamanders, a newt, a Red Swamp Crawfish, 3 Racoons, an Armadillo.

  Photos below

Above and below, Plain Bellied Watersnake

Red Swamp Crawfish

Cave Salamander