Jefferson
Active member
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2012
- Messages
- 194
- Reaction score
- 33
- Points
- 28
- Location
- Southwest Missouri
- Country
- United States
This past February, I was invited to a scholarship competition at Washington and Lee University in Virginia. My first question to my Mom when she told me was: "Do they reimburse if you choose to drive?" Answer: darn skippy they do. Well, this past week, my Mom, my little brother the birder, and I executed our plans.
At 3:30 pm on Friday, we left Michigan and didn't stop until Cambridge, Ohio on the 77/70 intersection, right in the heart of fracking country. The next day saw us driving through West Virginia and over the Alleghenies into the Old Dominion, where we saw our first salamanders of the year about 20 miles from campus in Amherst County on a little emergency truck pulloff. They were a couple of Southern Two-Lined Salamanders. A brief long-shot search for Three-Lined Salamanders east of there failed, and we ended the day with a new county and the year's first finds (and the earliest finds ever in a calendar year for us) under our proverbial belts.
Sunday, we had breakfast in front of a big Confederate flag that sits adjacent an American flag and a National Historic Monument in Lexington before finding a Northern Dusky and another two-line in idyllic settings a few miles to the north near a Zion Baptist Church, at which I said a silent prayer before leaving. This spot featured a small, rushing creek (swollen with snowmelt because it was sixty degrees!!!!) through a little meadow with the backdrop of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance to the east. It was absolutely breathtaking. Norman Rockwell has got nothing on the Shenandoah Valley. This find in a muddy seep freaked Mom out a bit because I was in my nicer clothing. The competition started one hour later.
After the competition, which went into Tuesday morning, we drove back through West Virginia in the rain and were nearly hit by a car going 80 through a downpour that careened through three lanes and crashed into the guard rail. We missed it by no more than 15 feet while going over 50 mph. Maybe that minute at the wall of the Mount Zion Baptist Church did me some good even though I'm nondenominational. Anyway, we got into Lexington an hour before sunset and failed to find anything before dark. Road cruising at the spot I knew would have been too dangerous considering the multiple flooded spots on the road, so we turned in that night a demoralized bunch. That would turn around in the morning, which was yesterday, March 11, 2015.
We decided that we could go back to my spot and one other before going home. The ravine that we almost road cruised through yielded three brilliantly colored Northern Zigzags, which were a new species for me. They weren't under logs, but just sitting atop the leaf litter in such misty, moist, early morning conditions. Mom spotted the first one sitting three feet off the road. Although I was very happy for that find, it didn't come close to matching my elation for the next find. You must remember that the streams were very swollen and running swiftly with rainwater and snowmelt. Thus, it was a little scary to cross the creek where I planned to greet a few Barbouri without any waders. The crossing, which was harrowing for my brother, turned out to be worth it. In some pools and riffles on the edge of the creek, my brother and I flipped six or seven rocks. We found three adult Streamside Salamanders under those rocks! That wrapped up the trip as far as herps, and we drove home plus two new species, three counties, and a whole lot of adventuresome miles.
The pictures should be on caudata.org and the herp atlas by the end of this weekend, and within two weeks, I'll make a youtube video of the trip without the locale info that I keep in my personal/family footage archives. Spring has sprung south of Mason-Dixie (too bad it'll take another week and half in the Rust Belt)! Happy Herping you all!
Jefferson
At 3:30 pm on Friday, we left Michigan and didn't stop until Cambridge, Ohio on the 77/70 intersection, right in the heart of fracking country. The next day saw us driving through West Virginia and over the Alleghenies into the Old Dominion, where we saw our first salamanders of the year about 20 miles from campus in Amherst County on a little emergency truck pulloff. They were a couple of Southern Two-Lined Salamanders. A brief long-shot search for Three-Lined Salamanders east of there failed, and we ended the day with a new county and the year's first finds (and the earliest finds ever in a calendar year for us) under our proverbial belts.
Sunday, we had breakfast in front of a big Confederate flag that sits adjacent an American flag and a National Historic Monument in Lexington before finding a Northern Dusky and another two-line in idyllic settings a few miles to the north near a Zion Baptist Church, at which I said a silent prayer before leaving. This spot featured a small, rushing creek (swollen with snowmelt because it was sixty degrees!!!!) through a little meadow with the backdrop of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance to the east. It was absolutely breathtaking. Norman Rockwell has got nothing on the Shenandoah Valley. This find in a muddy seep freaked Mom out a bit because I was in my nicer clothing. The competition started one hour later.
After the competition, which went into Tuesday morning, we drove back through West Virginia in the rain and were nearly hit by a car going 80 through a downpour that careened through three lanes and crashed into the guard rail. We missed it by no more than 15 feet while going over 50 mph. Maybe that minute at the wall of the Mount Zion Baptist Church did me some good even though I'm nondenominational. Anyway, we got into Lexington an hour before sunset and failed to find anything before dark. Road cruising at the spot I knew would have been too dangerous considering the multiple flooded spots on the road, so we turned in that night a demoralized bunch. That would turn around in the morning, which was yesterday, March 11, 2015.
We decided that we could go back to my spot and one other before going home. The ravine that we almost road cruised through yielded three brilliantly colored Northern Zigzags, which were a new species for me. They weren't under logs, but just sitting atop the leaf litter in such misty, moist, early morning conditions. Mom spotted the first one sitting three feet off the road. Although I was very happy for that find, it didn't come close to matching my elation for the next find. You must remember that the streams were very swollen and running swiftly with rainwater and snowmelt. Thus, it was a little scary to cross the creek where I planned to greet a few Barbouri without any waders. The crossing, which was harrowing for my brother, turned out to be worth it. In some pools and riffles on the edge of the creek, my brother and I flipped six or seven rocks. We found three adult Streamside Salamanders under those rocks! That wrapped up the trip as far as herps, and we drove home plus two new species, three counties, and a whole lot of adventuresome miles.
The pictures should be on caudata.org and the herp atlas by the end of this weekend, and within two weeks, I'll make a youtube video of the trip without the locale info that I keep in my personal/family footage archives. Spring has sprung south of Mason-Dixie (too bad it'll take another week and half in the Rust Belt)! Happy Herping you all!
Jefferson