Ambystoma laterale and Plethodon cinereus prevalent after heavy rains.

[JaceW/Lifer-Log]

Two Fridays back, on the 28th of August two days of rain had just wrapped up. The sun was shining in this humid afternoon and I saw a ideal opportunity to find the sals in my area that had been down deep thanks to the dry summer.

I arrived at my go to salamander herping spot at around 4:00. I was just steps into the path and under the first log I flipped was an Ambystoma laterale subadult around two and a half inches in length. First one I’ve seen this shallow all summer. I kept deeper, the humidity was killer but made the forest so much livelier, the forest floor was crawling with isopod manca. A bench on the path was saturated with water to the point the point where some sort of algae appeared to be growing on it, the bench was as well covered in manca. After flipping almost every log in site for say a minutes walk on the path if I wasn’t flipping, I found the next salamander if the trip a lungless salamander one of the two we have hear in Michigan and definitly the more common of the two, Plethodon cinereus. It was a large around three inch adult rather camera shy. I gave up on shooting this one.

The next salamander was the by far best of the trip, a four to five inch long adult A. laterale! This park I’m herping in is full of subadults I rarely encounter adults, little did I know at the time this adult is the first of multiple to come. I wandered a little ways in the trail for this encounter, I was around two to three yards from the designated path. A thick leaf litter coated the ground and Hypnum Moss was growing on most all of the bark. A medium sized log around two foot in length and six inches in diameter stood out as the largest log in its emediate area, singled out from bark flats and branches. Under this was the largest adult of the trip and largest I’ve ever seen of A. laterale.
The next salamander was an even larger than before,P. cinereus! this one was much less resistant to photography and I got a magnificent shot. No truely notable encounters happened after this one, two logs That were flipped happened to have two A. laterale underneath them. Always an uplifting sight. I managed to flip a yellow jacket nest, luckily I make it out sting free! In the end this trip was only around an hour and a half ending at 5:30, but it was the most productive trip of 2020.