jaster
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- Oct 25, 2009
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- Location
- Boone, North Carolina
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I was incredibly bummed I couldn't make it out to this years NAFHA, so I got to talking and wound up going with Appalachian States herpetology class out to Francis Marion National Forest in SC. I had been on this trip five years ago and was going with my long time college herper friend, Worth, who helped drive the undergrads down. Due to the shutdown.... we had to camp on private property. It was a guy who had known the professor for a long time, so it was no trouble.
We arrived at the property around 11:30 pm 10/3. A group of people from ETSU also came down to herp with us. They already had been walking around and found Euryce quadradigitata, Bufo terrestris, Hyla cinerea and Rana catesbeiana. I walked up when they had a bagful of the Eurycea and there nose dug in Peterson's guide. They asked Worth and I how we distinguish Eurycea to which Worth replied, "Well, it looks like Eurycea..." Once the rest of our group arrived we set up and walked some more, eventually finding a Hyla femoralis (Pine woods treefrog). One of my favorite frogs, and I still didn't photograph it...
Friday, October 4th.
We got up bright and early for some good herping, and left behind schedule. Seemed to be the theme for the trip. Anyway, we stopped out to set up our turtle and minnow traps in some water off the service road and spent a couple of hours walking around.
Time to enter the woods.
After the initial shock of mountain people wandering into giant spider (Nephila sp.) webs, it was a lot easier to concentrate on finding things. My first find this trip wasn't a herp, it was a fungus.
Sparassis crispa. It is a polypore and generally hard, yet edible. This one was small, they can reach a meter large and over sixty pounds....
Worth (in the red) and people lifting a log.
Don't know this one.
Or this one.
Finally made it around to another sinkhole. Every time you walked up to one you could hear a large number of frogs diving in. Most of these turned out to be Rana utricularia at this site. Walking around the edge happened across a Thamnophis sauritus. It caught me of guard because I was headed to check out a mushroom I saw, I experienced a piqued interest overload for a second.
T. sauritus
One of my first ribbon snakes down south. It had been a while since I found a nice snake.
The fungus that initially caught my eye. Lactarius scrobiculatus, or at least something close to that... A student also found a sweet wine-red Hydenellum species I had never seen before. A decent day already for fungi!
Figured we strayed a bit far from the vans and headed back. I still don't know how, but I spotted a perfectly camouflaged fence lizard 20 yards away through a head splitting hang over....
Sceloporus undulatus
Dr. Vandevender and a few students photographing the lizard.
This was the most well behaved lizard, even herp for that matter, I have ever seen. It sat still on that log for every person in our group of 40 to take a photo, dorsal and ventral shots...
After this we broke for lunch and headed to the Santee River. This is our notorious mosquito trap herp spot. My legs and shoulders looked like raspberries after this stop, but we did find a number of herps (and a delicious fungus).
This site has numerous pockets of shallow cypress swamp which we kicked out two Siren species, Amphiuma means and Stereochilus marginatus. A large, female broadheaded skink (Eumeces laticeps) was caught and promptly escaped the net... Cricket frogs (Acris gryllus) were everywhere you stepped and a few green tree frogs were found hiding out in the palms. Also seen in this locale were three Agkistrodon piscivorus. This one was on my own, in situ.
This one was found under a log right next to the main trail we had been walking about for an hour or so...
After that, I began to move up a channel with a few other folks. While they were trying to wrangle the third cottonmouth, worth spotted this
Hericium erinaceus, a delicious tooth fungi. They have a texture like crab and a nice, subtle flavor.
I also found a small bunch of Pleurotus in the parking lot.
Moving into late afternoon we headed to a good herping creek along one of the main roads. Anolis were crawling all over the culverts in the afternoon sun, but the good stuff was under them. This whole trip I had the goal to find a scarlet kingsnake, which I never did. As sad as that was, this guy totally made up for it.
Farancia abacura, a long awaited lifer for me! It's always fun to walk around people new to herping and hear them slightly freak out a mutter "sssnnaakee!", to which I rush towards and find this hunk, crawling along in the open swamp.
Letting everyone enjoy this pretty beast.
The other groups kicked up a young Nerodia fasciata.
Showing us why it is a banded watersnake.
Took a quick break fro dinner and headed right back out. Check on our turtle/ minnow traps and found nothing of interest in them. Did hear a barred owl calling in the distance and of course, caught a bunch of Anolis sleeping. After that we headed to the boat ramp site. This site is nice because it has the swamp and a nice hillside with it to get some varied habitat. There's also a creek with desmogs in it, but we failed to round any up. There were plenty of Eurycea out and I took two sub-par photos.
Eurycea guttolineata
Eurycea quadradigitata
I rushed through those photos to attempt catching a copperhead or canebrake but found nothing exciting herp-wise. There was this cool cluster of Cortinarius mushrooms though.
Somehow managed to spot this little one in the leaf litter.
Storeria occipitomaculata
Walking back to the van, I headed to a patch of grass, trying to catch a katydid to feed to any large spider. Instead I found a wonderful spadefoot toad (Scaphiopus holbrooki) which I didn't photograph until morning. Someone also found a rough green snake (Opheodrys aestivus) near the boat ramp.
Back to camp, almost 12 hours of pure herping done this day. Passed out after two cold beers.
Saturday, Oct. 5th
Woke up to a little grass frog (Limnaoedus ocularis) around the water spigot.
Scaphiopus holbrooki from the previous night.
After breakfast, we headed right back to the boating spot to herp in the daytime. Instead of automatically roaring through the woods, I started my day photographing (or at least attempting too).
I guess feeling the ground after a night in a bag made this one eager to escape. It didn't cooperate one bit for me to get a good shot. Worth asked for me to hold it down and let him take a picture like he tried multiple times for me. I countdown, take my hands away, and the thing sits there perfectly in the morning light for Worth to shoot... I did managed to snap one quick, seconds before it tried taking off again.
Shortly after, I heard the wary snake call again and ran to find the students pointing towards a cottonmouth. While Worth and I got a hold of it, it managed to get a mouthful of earth.
I couldn't tell if it was hissing or trying to breath, but we brought to the water and washed out the dirt. Sure did look alot prettier after that.
This site is also know for its marbled salamander (Ambystoma opacum) population. Always love seeing these little, fat guys.
And a quick habitat shot.
Regrouping at the vans for lunch we got to see everything else our small herping army had found. A few musk turtles (Kinosternon baurii, K. subrubrum), a mud turtle (Sternotherus odoratus), more of the various frogs and toads and a few ringnecks (Diadophis punctatus). One yellow rat (Elaphe o. qudravittata) also showed up. The best part about this site was who we met. While hanging around eating lunch some good old boys came by taking a break from their fishing to figure out just what the hell we were doing. Once the reptiles and snakes came up they got excited. I wish I could type in my redneck voice, but the gist of it was they had a huge rattlesnake and a bunch of property crawling with fun stuff. That was enough to convince our professor to take the whole crew over to their land for some fun. Once we got there they busted out a huge canebrake (Crotalus horridus).
Its head goes on for about another six inches. While people were oogling that bad boy, I was searching for some tin to flip. I found a pile.
This was my first time dealing with so much in one pile. I don't really go towards herp spots where AC is abundant for various reasons, mainly because they don't hold many salamanders. Luckily we had a nice tin flipping squad and got to the bottom pretty quick to find the trips first copperhead (Agkistrodon contortrix).
A total of two copperhead were found in this pile along with numerous roaches and rat nests. Even with the other piles of debris in the yard, no other snakes were turned up. One of the guys told me about the swamp area which I checked out with Worth and another lab guy from the university. It was just a cool area to be in, we sat and watched things live for about an hour.
Just letting the sun break through while you slowly sink into the debris mats, quiet enough to hear the dragonflys buzz dozens of yards away, breath in the heavy, wet air and smell the swamp. I love that. Eventually a few small pecks and wood breaking averted my concentration. I looked to the other two and we confirmed there was a woodpecker to our right. Patrick (lab guy) whips out his smartphone and gets on his North American bird call app, going through the woodpecker calls to try and get a response. This is the only reason I would want a phone like that... On about the third attempt, we got a call back. The bird then flew right up two us, stopping in a tree not even ten feet from me. It was a red bellied woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus). We sat there for another twenty minutes calling out to this bird, feebly attempting to photograph it. My industrial strength point and shoot could not even come close to getting a usable picture, but you can almost see a bird here.
The middle tree, leftside, above the clump of spanish moss. My try at the bird, mid flight. If I remembered how to set my camera, this could have been a really cool shot.
Having my first, true, birding experience go so well, I figured we should leave and see what the group had been doing. On the way out, Worth saw a frog hop. I paid no mind after seeing hundreds of leopard, bull and cricket frogs everywhere. He scooped it up and I went "whoa...". It turned out to be a carpenter frog (Rana virgatipes), a first on this trip and for me as well!
You can see the light stripes where the typical "ridge" should be on other Rana frogs. Webbing was short-ish and the venter looks super cool. A good and lucky find!
The others had walked about the neighboring woods and came up with several black races, most were in shed.
After this mini show and tell, we said our thanks and goodbyes to our new southern friends and left while they prepped for an all out hog hunt. Almost wish I stayed...
The rest of the night was mellow, everyone was beat from the massive herp day we had before and I was just realizing my wonderful case of chiggers up and down each leg... We did manage to pull out a young Plethodon variolatus, the only Plethodon species in the area.
Also a nice looking worm snake (Carphophis amoenus) which I didn't photograph. We stopped at some river crossings and searched a few. I found nothihng of interest beside the massive amounts of aquatic insects moving about. Got back to camp early and straight to bed.
Sunday, Oct 6th
This breakfast was good, I got to prepare our wild fungi for the people who were willing to enjoy it with me. It would also be my last morning with camp coffee, which I was excited about. I guess I never mentioned how we knew the landowner who let us camp out during this trip. He's know our professor for a long time and has always run his property as snake free. After not being able to coerce him into leaving snakes alive, he decided to freeze the ones he gets for us to take back every year. This time he had an eastern king (Lampropeltis getula) and a mud snake. I'm sure glad my lifer Farancia was alive and not this guy. They claimed to have at least one rattle in the ice block, but all I could see was an eel tail sticking out. How he shot that out of water, I do not know....
To conclude the trip, we made a stop at the riverbanks zoo where we toured the herp exhibits. A few things stood out to me, most notably the Protobothrops they had. Such wicked looking snakes. It got to be real fun going behind the scenes to see the nitty gritty herps. Its a toss up, but my two favorites there were the flatwoods salamander (Ambystoma cingulatum) and the Azemiops viper they had. Both were super uncooperative, so no good photos. There was also several Hyla andersonii, a huge tub full of Ambystoma species, a good number of spitting and king cobras, green tree monitors and various frogs I didn't care to see. We only had forty minutes here, so it was back on the road in no time.
Overall, the trip was great. Allowed me for a good weekend off to go run around in some woods. Getting into some warm weather before this winter hits was also a plus, not to mention the Farancia we happened across! That made my month/ year for sure. Well, thanks for bearing with my, hope the text didn't put you guys out!
-Brad
We arrived at the property around 11:30 pm 10/3. A group of people from ETSU also came down to herp with us. They already had been walking around and found Euryce quadradigitata, Bufo terrestris, Hyla cinerea and Rana catesbeiana. I walked up when they had a bagful of the Eurycea and there nose dug in Peterson's guide. They asked Worth and I how we distinguish Eurycea to which Worth replied, "Well, it looks like Eurycea..." Once the rest of our group arrived we set up and walked some more, eventually finding a Hyla femoralis (Pine woods treefrog). One of my favorite frogs, and I still didn't photograph it...
Friday, October 4th.
We got up bright and early for some good herping, and left behind schedule. Seemed to be the theme for the trip. Anyway, we stopped out to set up our turtle and minnow traps in some water off the service road and spent a couple of hours walking around.
Time to enter the woods.
After the initial shock of mountain people wandering into giant spider (Nephila sp.) webs, it was a lot easier to concentrate on finding things. My first find this trip wasn't a herp, it was a fungus.
Sparassis crispa. It is a polypore and generally hard, yet edible. This one was small, they can reach a meter large and over sixty pounds....
Worth (in the red) and people lifting a log.
Don't know this one.
Or this one.
Finally made it around to another sinkhole. Every time you walked up to one you could hear a large number of frogs diving in. Most of these turned out to be Rana utricularia at this site. Walking around the edge happened across a Thamnophis sauritus. It caught me of guard because I was headed to check out a mushroom I saw, I experienced a piqued interest overload for a second.
T. sauritus
One of my first ribbon snakes down south. It had been a while since I found a nice snake.
The fungus that initially caught my eye. Lactarius scrobiculatus, or at least something close to that... A student also found a sweet wine-red Hydenellum species I had never seen before. A decent day already for fungi!
Figured we strayed a bit far from the vans and headed back. I still don't know how, but I spotted a perfectly camouflaged fence lizard 20 yards away through a head splitting hang over....
Sceloporus undulatus
Dr. Vandevender and a few students photographing the lizard.
This was the most well behaved lizard, even herp for that matter, I have ever seen. It sat still on that log for every person in our group of 40 to take a photo, dorsal and ventral shots...
After this we broke for lunch and headed to the Santee River. This is our notorious mosquito trap herp spot. My legs and shoulders looked like raspberries after this stop, but we did find a number of herps (and a delicious fungus).
This site has numerous pockets of shallow cypress swamp which we kicked out two Siren species, Amphiuma means and Stereochilus marginatus. A large, female broadheaded skink (Eumeces laticeps) was caught and promptly escaped the net... Cricket frogs (Acris gryllus) were everywhere you stepped and a few green tree frogs were found hiding out in the palms. Also seen in this locale were three Agkistrodon piscivorus. This one was on my own, in situ.
This one was found under a log right next to the main trail we had been walking about for an hour or so...
After that, I began to move up a channel with a few other folks. While they were trying to wrangle the third cottonmouth, worth spotted this
Hericium erinaceus, a delicious tooth fungi. They have a texture like crab and a nice, subtle flavor.
I also found a small bunch of Pleurotus in the parking lot.
Moving into late afternoon we headed to a good herping creek along one of the main roads. Anolis were crawling all over the culverts in the afternoon sun, but the good stuff was under them. This whole trip I had the goal to find a scarlet kingsnake, which I never did. As sad as that was, this guy totally made up for it.
Farancia abacura, a long awaited lifer for me! It's always fun to walk around people new to herping and hear them slightly freak out a mutter "sssnnaakee!", to which I rush towards and find this hunk, crawling along in the open swamp.
Letting everyone enjoy this pretty beast.
The other groups kicked up a young Nerodia fasciata.
Showing us why it is a banded watersnake.
Took a quick break fro dinner and headed right back out. Check on our turtle/ minnow traps and found nothing of interest in them. Did hear a barred owl calling in the distance and of course, caught a bunch of Anolis sleeping. After that we headed to the boat ramp site. This site is nice because it has the swamp and a nice hillside with it to get some varied habitat. There's also a creek with desmogs in it, but we failed to round any up. There were plenty of Eurycea out and I took two sub-par photos.
Eurycea guttolineata
Eurycea quadradigitata
I rushed through those photos to attempt catching a copperhead or canebrake but found nothing exciting herp-wise. There was this cool cluster of Cortinarius mushrooms though.
Somehow managed to spot this little one in the leaf litter.
Storeria occipitomaculata
Walking back to the van, I headed to a patch of grass, trying to catch a katydid to feed to any large spider. Instead I found a wonderful spadefoot toad (Scaphiopus holbrooki) which I didn't photograph until morning. Someone also found a rough green snake (Opheodrys aestivus) near the boat ramp.
Back to camp, almost 12 hours of pure herping done this day. Passed out after two cold beers.
Saturday, Oct. 5th
Woke up to a little grass frog (Limnaoedus ocularis) around the water spigot.
Scaphiopus holbrooki from the previous night.
After breakfast, we headed right back to the boating spot to herp in the daytime. Instead of automatically roaring through the woods, I started my day photographing (or at least attempting too).
I guess feeling the ground after a night in a bag made this one eager to escape. It didn't cooperate one bit for me to get a good shot. Worth asked for me to hold it down and let him take a picture like he tried multiple times for me. I countdown, take my hands away, and the thing sits there perfectly in the morning light for Worth to shoot... I did managed to snap one quick, seconds before it tried taking off again.
Shortly after, I heard the wary snake call again and ran to find the students pointing towards a cottonmouth. While Worth and I got a hold of it, it managed to get a mouthful of earth.
I couldn't tell if it was hissing or trying to breath, but we brought to the water and washed out the dirt. Sure did look alot prettier after that.
This site is also know for its marbled salamander (Ambystoma opacum) population. Always love seeing these little, fat guys.
And a quick habitat shot.
Regrouping at the vans for lunch we got to see everything else our small herping army had found. A few musk turtles (Kinosternon baurii, K. subrubrum), a mud turtle (Sternotherus odoratus), more of the various frogs and toads and a few ringnecks (Diadophis punctatus). One yellow rat (Elaphe o. qudravittata) also showed up. The best part about this site was who we met. While hanging around eating lunch some good old boys came by taking a break from their fishing to figure out just what the hell we were doing. Once the reptiles and snakes came up they got excited. I wish I could type in my redneck voice, but the gist of it was they had a huge rattlesnake and a bunch of property crawling with fun stuff. That was enough to convince our professor to take the whole crew over to their land for some fun. Once we got there they busted out a huge canebrake (Crotalus horridus).
Its head goes on for about another six inches. While people were oogling that bad boy, I was searching for some tin to flip. I found a pile.
This was my first time dealing with so much in one pile. I don't really go towards herp spots where AC is abundant for various reasons, mainly because they don't hold many salamanders. Luckily we had a nice tin flipping squad and got to the bottom pretty quick to find the trips first copperhead (Agkistrodon contortrix).
A total of two copperhead were found in this pile along with numerous roaches and rat nests. Even with the other piles of debris in the yard, no other snakes were turned up. One of the guys told me about the swamp area which I checked out with Worth and another lab guy from the university. It was just a cool area to be in, we sat and watched things live for about an hour.
Just letting the sun break through while you slowly sink into the debris mats, quiet enough to hear the dragonflys buzz dozens of yards away, breath in the heavy, wet air and smell the swamp. I love that. Eventually a few small pecks and wood breaking averted my concentration. I looked to the other two and we confirmed there was a woodpecker to our right. Patrick (lab guy) whips out his smartphone and gets on his North American bird call app, going through the woodpecker calls to try and get a response. This is the only reason I would want a phone like that... On about the third attempt, we got a call back. The bird then flew right up two us, stopping in a tree not even ten feet from me. It was a red bellied woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus). We sat there for another twenty minutes calling out to this bird, feebly attempting to photograph it. My industrial strength point and shoot could not even come close to getting a usable picture, but you can almost see a bird here.
The middle tree, leftside, above the clump of spanish moss. My try at the bird, mid flight. If I remembered how to set my camera, this could have been a really cool shot.
Having my first, true, birding experience go so well, I figured we should leave and see what the group had been doing. On the way out, Worth saw a frog hop. I paid no mind after seeing hundreds of leopard, bull and cricket frogs everywhere. He scooped it up and I went "whoa...". It turned out to be a carpenter frog (Rana virgatipes), a first on this trip and for me as well!
You can see the light stripes where the typical "ridge" should be on other Rana frogs. Webbing was short-ish and the venter looks super cool. A good and lucky find!
The others had walked about the neighboring woods and came up with several black races, most were in shed.
After this mini show and tell, we said our thanks and goodbyes to our new southern friends and left while they prepped for an all out hog hunt. Almost wish I stayed...
The rest of the night was mellow, everyone was beat from the massive herp day we had before and I was just realizing my wonderful case of chiggers up and down each leg... We did manage to pull out a young Plethodon variolatus, the only Plethodon species in the area.
Also a nice looking worm snake (Carphophis amoenus) which I didn't photograph. We stopped at some river crossings and searched a few. I found nothihng of interest beside the massive amounts of aquatic insects moving about. Got back to camp early and straight to bed.
Sunday, Oct 6th
This breakfast was good, I got to prepare our wild fungi for the people who were willing to enjoy it with me. It would also be my last morning with camp coffee, which I was excited about. I guess I never mentioned how we knew the landowner who let us camp out during this trip. He's know our professor for a long time and has always run his property as snake free. After not being able to coerce him into leaving snakes alive, he decided to freeze the ones he gets for us to take back every year. This time he had an eastern king (Lampropeltis getula) and a mud snake. I'm sure glad my lifer Farancia was alive and not this guy. They claimed to have at least one rattle in the ice block, but all I could see was an eel tail sticking out. How he shot that out of water, I do not know....
To conclude the trip, we made a stop at the riverbanks zoo where we toured the herp exhibits. A few things stood out to me, most notably the Protobothrops they had. Such wicked looking snakes. It got to be real fun going behind the scenes to see the nitty gritty herps. Its a toss up, but my two favorites there were the flatwoods salamander (Ambystoma cingulatum) and the Azemiops viper they had. Both were super uncooperative, so no good photos. There was also several Hyla andersonii, a huge tub full of Ambystoma species, a good number of spitting and king cobras, green tree monitors and various frogs I didn't care to see. We only had forty minutes here, so it was back on the road in no time.
Overall, the trip was great. Allowed me for a good weekend off to go run around in some woods. Getting into some warm weather before this winter hits was also a plus, not to mention the Farancia we happened across! That made my month/ year for sure. Well, thanks for bearing with my, hope the text didn't put you guys out!
-Brad
