Field Trip to the Poconos

[edward]

Or the failed hellbender hunt.
Justin Yeager and I took a couple of days to go to the Poconos to look for hellbenders to try and confirm if there were still some animals in some locations and to possibly collect a couple for the Philadelphia Zoo. We were unable to locate any hellbenders due to high water and equipment failure (the diving masks leaked) but the habitat was not promising as it is showing signs of siltation. So we took a little time out to look for other caudates and managed to find 10 other species of salamander and newt. I didn't take pictures of all of the species we saw but will post a few below but we did locate P. cinereus, P. glutinosus, D. ochrophaeus, D. fuscus, N. v. viridescens, E. bislineata, Pseudotriton r. ruber, and Gyrinophilus porphyriticus. We didn't find any of the ambystomids, four-toed or longtails (and of course no hellbenders).

 

[edward]

Here is a picture of a pair of Mountain Dusky salamanders

 

[edward]

A juvenile mountain dusky salamander

 

[edward]

Some spring salamander pics

 

[edward]

And finally some pictures of Justin looking for/catching some caudates...

and

There is a slightly more embarrassing picture of Justin catching a spring salamander but I'll be nice to Justin and not post that one.

Ed

 

[edward]

Correction to the total located, I was going off my sleep deprived mind (I drove my wife to the airport at 4:30 this morning for her flight to a conference in Calgary after getting home last night about 8:30 and not getting to sleep until around midnight by the time everything was cleaned and put away) and didn't bother to count the species list and went off my blurred recollection. The actual total was the eight species listed above not including the three species of snake (eastern garter snake (D.O.R.), Northern watersnake, and Northern red-belly snake) and assorted anurans (mostly green, bull and leopard frogs).

Ed