Many of these animals are offered various forms of protection. They were treated as such. I will not give up locations.
Got up early last week to head out for some saugas in NE Ohio. The weather finally cooled down and it rained all morning but stuck in the low 70s. We were seeing snakes all morning, but around noon the sun poked out
and this fat gem was basking as such (7th in past 2 weeks)...
Some other stuff we saw.
Dekay Snake
Storeria dekayi
Garter Snake basking in the rain
It made for a pretty good day, and geared me up for the big trip of the week, NW Ohio...
I got up at the butt crack of dawn Sat morning to meet Andy A. out near Toledo. We had a bunch of targets, and herping around there proved to be pretty easy with the nice cool weather.
Around 9:30 that morning, I spot our number one target. It was just basking in the grass, and all I say is "there's one" in a very boring voice. Not the reaction you would expect for a lifer, but I tell you, my heart was racing...
Eastern Fox Snake (lifer)
Somethingorother vulpina
I hope you all like Fox snakes...
Soon after we spot this little guy basking in the fringe.
Butler's Garter Snake (lifer)
Thamnophis butleri
And another one (we would see 5)
Our next finds were a couple more fox snakes.
Do you see it??
There he is...
Here I am chatting with a park ranger who happened to pull up right as I made the grab on number 3...
I was a little worried but he was a real nice guy and had no problem with us taking pictures.
From here we decided to head over to another part of Toledo where hognose and blue racers are common due to the very different type of habitat there. I have yet to see a hognose this year so I was pretty excited to check the place out.
After a few slips from a couple racers Andy practically steps on this...
Eastern Hognose
Heterodon platyrhinos
By far the prettiest snake I have EVER seen.
And of course, he was not very cooperative.
Soon after we wrangled up a racer that seemed to be about to shed unfortunately.
Blue Racer (lifer)
Coluber constrictor foxi
After that we tried some other hunting but did not have any luck. The next morning we hit the islands hoping for some Lake Erie water snakes. Not exactly a tough feat...
Lake Erie Water Snake (lifer and ugly bastards)
Nerodia sipedon insularum
After our fill of these guys, they were everywhere, we hit a trail hoping to get lucky and spot something.
Again, it would prove easy...
Fox Snake
And another
Andy also nabbed a big blue racer, that was fairly black with blue only on the face (here my camera batteries (both of them) had died and were charging...
We found a huge garter snake under tin and another fox.
Thing slowed down for a bit until I managed to flip a good looking log. Andy I guess had tried to kick it, but decided it wasn't worth the trouble. Needless to say he was unhappy to see my flip it later and then dive down for this...
A mutt, otherwise known as the Kelly's Island Salamander (lifer)
Ambystoma pieceofcrapicus mutticus (LTTi)
I pretty much called it a trip from there and caught the ferry back to get on the road. I think Andy turned up 30 some or so water snakes and another fox snake. The trip was actually a ton of fun and neither of us expected to do so well. I had never thought Toledo would be much fun, I still couldn't live there, but it has some neat stuff. I normally wouldn't call these crap thingies lifers, but hey they have some kind of crazy status...
I made a quick stop in Central Ohio on my way home to round things off.
I hope you enjoyed, I can't wait to get out again.
Jason
Oh, if you want to try your hand at a little game. See if you can pair habitat shots up with the different regions of Ohio. There are 6 Ohio options and 1 Ky option, but not all have to be used. If you paid
attention, it should not be too terribly difficult.
