bewilderbeast
New member
- Joined
- Apr 8, 2009
- Messages
- 190
- Reaction score
- 10
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- Location
- Northern California
- Country
- United States
With the recent moisture that Northern CA has been receiving, I set my sights a bit further north.
My target species were Aneides flavipunctatus, and A. vagrans...
I had also hoped to see some torrent salamanders and possibly some Dicamptodon and I have been hunting for pacific ringneck snakes since last spring.
Unfortunately I busted my camera lense about a week ago and had to borrow a camera from a friend. This gave me some problems as I wasn't familiar with the layout of everything so I didn't get the photos I would have liked but thought I'd post some of them anyway.
Firstly, two A. flavipunctatus. They display very different color and patterning from one another. I believe that the darker, spotted individual is from the southern-central disjunct while the lighter, non spotted one is from further north and belongs to the Northern-central disjunct. I may be wrong in this assumption as I don't have any genetic evidence to back this up, but a the second largest river on the Nor Cal coast divides the areas between the sites where these two animals were discovered. I think this could be enough to sufficiently divide the populations into genetically distinct subspecies.
The first was found under redwood debris in mixed secondary forest close to an Old growth redwood grove. He was sharing his log with an Oregon ensatina.
several more ensatinas from this location about 9 in all.
North from here I stopped at a rocky, north facing road cut that looked perfect.
I found an adult A flavipuntatus sharing a rock with a large California Forest scorpion.
they were staring each other down when I flipped the rock and were both nice enough to pose.
.
Further north and east I traveled. It was much dryer inland than I had expected and
my Caudate finds dropped to 0. I was in one spot that seemed perfect and I must have flipped a hundred objects without so much as a centipede under them.
As I was walking away from the area I flipped one last small rock and unearthed A Pacific ringneck snake.
I have been looking for these for a while, they are absolute gems when you see one in person. This at least explained the absence of Salamanders in an otherwise perfect habitat as the ringneck's main prey items are plethodontids...
I didn't find any A vagrans, though I wasn't really far north enough to be in ideal habitat. Overall I was happy with my finds (especially the ringneck) even though my find to flip ratio was very low with about 1 find per 100 objects searched.
Also, I took a lot of photos but do to my lack of familiarity with borrowed equipment I didn't end up getting as nice of photos as I would normally shoot.
Hope y'all enjoy.
My target species were Aneides flavipunctatus, and A. vagrans...
I had also hoped to see some torrent salamanders and possibly some Dicamptodon and I have been hunting for pacific ringneck snakes since last spring.
Unfortunately I busted my camera lense about a week ago and had to borrow a camera from a friend. This gave me some problems as I wasn't familiar with the layout of everything so I didn't get the photos I would have liked but thought I'd post some of them anyway.
Firstly, two A. flavipunctatus. They display very different color and patterning from one another. I believe that the darker, spotted individual is from the southern-central disjunct while the lighter, non spotted one is from further north and belongs to the Northern-central disjunct. I may be wrong in this assumption as I don't have any genetic evidence to back this up, but a the second largest river on the Nor Cal coast divides the areas between the sites where these two animals were discovered. I think this could be enough to sufficiently divide the populations into genetically distinct subspecies.
The first was found under redwood debris in mixed secondary forest close to an Old growth redwood grove. He was sharing his log with an Oregon ensatina.
several more ensatinas from this location about 9 in all.
North from here I stopped at a rocky, north facing road cut that looked perfect.
I found an adult A flavipuntatus sharing a rock with a large California Forest scorpion.
they were staring each other down when I flipped the rock and were both nice enough to pose.
Further north and east I traveled. It was much dryer inland than I had expected and
my Caudate finds dropped to 0. I was in one spot that seemed perfect and I must have flipped a hundred objects without so much as a centipede under them.
As I was walking away from the area I flipped one last small rock and unearthed A Pacific ringneck snake.
I have been looking for these for a while, they are absolute gems when you see one in person. This at least explained the absence of Salamanders in an otherwise perfect habitat as the ringneck's main prey items are plethodontids...
I didn't find any A vagrans, though I wasn't really far north enough to be in ideal habitat. Overall I was happy with my finds (especially the ringneck) even though my find to flip ratio was very low with about 1 find per 100 objects searched.
Also, I took a lot of photos but do to my lack of familiarity with borrowed equipment I didn't end up getting as nice of photos as I would normally shoot.
Hope y'all enjoy.