Short Field Trip Last Week

[john]

Here are some of the better pics (and a couple of the lousy ones) from a short field herping trip last week. The locale was near the source of a short stream. Found about 30 Pl. Cinereus, mostly juveniles hatched last year and about 5 or so full grown adults. One adult was a gravid female, no other adult specimens showed signs of yolked eggs so the presumption is a predominance of males. The majority of the cinereus occured on a fairly rocky slope above the stream in this habitat:

Here are 2 juveniles found together

Another juvenile lead back phase

An adult lead back phase

The gravid female (unfortunately, I did not get a good underside shot)

Here is the stream proper

One of the larger rocks in the foreground yielded my first thrilling sight of a D. fuscus tail wriggling under neighboring rocks for this year. I was unable to find it again. I'm sure there will be plenty more in the next month. There were also several raccoon tracks in the mud in this immediate area. I think this is probably an area of high predation which would explain the absense of many brook specimens (no E. bis were found here).

Finally, on the other side of stream was this rather large lead back phase Cinereus

 

[ryan]

Nice pictures, I love finding these little guys, I found 3 (2 adults of about 4 inches, and 1 youngster that was maybe 2 inches long) of them last night and I'm heading back out again today.

 

[cameron]

Good find. They look Awesome!

I'm always finding leadback serratus. I wish we had more Redbacks than Leadbacks down here.