There’s a huge difference between finding and just “seeing”. That’s why, to me, finding reptiles and amphibians in their natural habitats is even more interesting than keeping them in captivity or seeing them in zoos. Salamanders, of all the reptiles and amphibians (“herps”), are the most reliable to find. Salamanders don’t move around very much at all in the entirety of their lives (compared with Eastern indigo snakes which can have individual home ranges up to 1,200 acres!). Even the more migratory Ambystomids like spotted salamanders and marbled salamanders are decently predictable to find. If you know a salamander species’ micro-habitat, seasonality, and the weather in which they are most active, you stand a good chance at finding even the rarest of them.
Nathan has had a passion for salamanders ever since he was a kid and I joined him in his goal to see every salamander species in the U.S. Since childhood I’ve been an all-around field herper (someone who looks or reptiles and amphibians in the wild), but I’ve grown to love finding salamanders most of all because they are so much more reliable and predictable (i.e., more rewarding- ha!) to seek and find than, say, snakes and lizards.
So here is another episode in our search to find and photograph every salamander species in the United States. This time we had an exceptionally rare salamander on the docket that was discovered in 2011, the Ouachita streambed salamander. Miraculously, we were able to get in touch with a wildlife biologist in Arkansas who knew the exact specifics on how and where to find the Ouachita streambed salamander.
For the first part of our trip, Nathan and I left at midnight and drove on Friday March 18th to Louisiana in order to try our hand at the last slimy salamander on our lifer list. We were feeling quite silly from lack of sleep. At the beginning of the trail Nathan sang his little jingle parody of Louisiana Saturday Night that had me cracking up. He loves coming up with parody songs to country music that involves field herping. We’ve been to this spot before with no luck of turning one up in January 2021. This day we hiked and turned over so many logs that it seemed like we would strike out again. I occupied myself by taking photos of the scenery between flipping logs.
back-lit ferns in a seepage
back-lit “suncatcher” maple samaras
Nathan turned up this beautiful Louisiana slimy salamander that was hiding in the crevice of a rotting log. Now we’ve seen all of the members of the slimy salamander clan!
Louisiana slimy salamander
After finding the slimy, we drove straight to Arkansas to meet up with wildlife biologist, Kelly Irwin, and eat dinner at his old standby Mexican restaurant. As the sun went down, we three headed to the one location where Ouachita streambed salamanders are known to occur. They are best found at nighttime since they are light-sensitive and feed on nocturnal aquatic isopods. As we put on our disinfected boots and gathered flashlights, we saw a bat flying overhead. A nice bycatch- ha! Kelly had quite the amusing assemblage of flashlights. He strapped on his caving helmet with a duo of lights securely zip-tied, and toted his trusty diving flashlight in hand.
We walked to the stream as Kelly Irwin explained to us the most likely reason why these salamanders have such a small home range. They rely on pristine streams with chert and novaculite rock to keep the streambed loosened. Here’s why this is key. They are fully aquatic and move up and down through the loose gravel with the rise and fall of the water table to avoid drought. The Ouachita streambed salamander population is extremely sensitive to “bedload” sedimentation. They probably had a much larger home-range before, but everywhere nearby that would otherwise be suitable habitat, has seen historic timber harvesting which caused sedimentation that filled in the gaps in the streambed rock, preventing the Ouachita streambed salamander to burrow up and down with the water table in the summer droughts.
To catch a Ouachita streambed, it is essential to have a “twiggler” in hand. This is Kelly’s name for a small stick used for scaring these aquatic salamanders so they’ll wiggle into your net. You can see this method being used in the photo below. I love this photo so much! It has an element of humor and also sci-fi with the glow seemingly coming from the mysterious critter below the water.
Kelly Irwin and Nathan nabbing the second Ouachita streambed salamander of the night while I photographed the first.
Ouachita streambed salamander
Many-ribbed salamander larvae
There is a very similar-looking salamander larvae that lives sympatrically with the Ouachita streambed salamander, which is why the latter went unnoticed for so long. They look alike at first glance, but when comparing one against the other, the differences begin to clear. The Ouachita streambed salamander is less patterned than the many-ribbed salamander, less colored, and more importantly, the Ouachita streambeds have a boxer-like flare to their snout and has recessed, black eyes. They also differ genetically, which confirmed that they were a seperate species in 2011. Compare the two photos above and see if you can notice the morphological differences between the two.
Nathan and I were so excited to see this unique and incredibly rare salamander in it’s own habitat with one of the fellows who discovered it!
Nathan and I took a whirlwind road trip from Missouri to the Southeastern states in search of salamanders to knock off our life list. We have a fun goal to see all of the salamander species in the United States in our lifetime, and we’ve now seen 145 of the current 249 species. My boss gave me several days off for the holidays so Nathan wanted to make the most of it. I was slightly dreading all of the driving, but all in all it was a fantastic trip. The people who we met and spent time with really made the trip a blast! There was one fella who we ran into on a Georgia trail who we never would’ve dreamed the odds of us meeting at random. I’ll get to that later in the blog, because it is so awesome!
As a side note, I don’t include specific location names because many of these salamanders are protected and in vulnerable habitats. We spray our boots with disinfectant between locations to prevent potential disease spread.
It’s almost customary for us to drive through the first night on long road trips. Packed with a trip CD, minnow traps, cameras, pork BBQ for our lunches, and other typical vacation items, Nathan started out driving from Aurora, MO. He got us all the way to Knoxville, TN when we swapped driving at about 2 AM. Even though it was late, I had a flow of energy running through my veins driving through Appalachia again, my favorite place in the world. After grabbing some McDonald’s breakfast, we arrived at our first herping spot near Greenville, NC at 9 AM to meet up with Dr. David Beamer, Biology Instructor and Lead Researcher at Nash Community College.
This guy’s the real deal. Amongst many other things, Dr. Beamer has been doing genomic research on salamander species, particularly dusky salamanders and two-lined salamanders. He may just be the reason we never reach our goal to see every salamander species because there will be new splits to species, darn it. But it’s all good and he’s an awesome guy.
We were targeting a Neuse river waterdog at our first spot. Before we got started, Dr. Beamer explained that the leaves we dip-netted in the stream had to be “well-seasoned” with decay/micro-organisms and have a bycatch of eels. We were on the right track; we dip-netted a dwarf waterdog or two, then six juvenile Neuse river waterdogs. Adult Neuse river waterdogs are absolutely beautiful with their black spotting, but the juevniles are more gold-striped with a couple tiny black dots.
Nathan got “set free” (a term coined by Dr. Beamer) when he tripped in the water while dip-netting and got his boots filled with water. “You’re a free man!” Dr. Beamer pronounced. Don’t have to fret and teeter over staying dry now. Like a couple of crazies, Nathan and I neglected to bring hip waders on this trip focused on aquatic and swamp-dwelling salamanders.
Dwarf waterdog
A tiny Neuse river waterdog. They get large black spots as they grow.
Me with the catch of the day
Next, we zipped over to another couple different locations to get our other lifer salamander species that live in different habitats. Dr. Beamer turned up a Chamberlain’s dwarf salamander and a southern dusky salamander under some wet leaf litter. Later at a swamp, Nathan and Dr. Beamer caught eight many-lined salamanders. They like hiding in partially-submerged small stick piles pushed up together. Dr. Beamer found a particularly good stick pile and said it was by far the best stick pile we had come across yet (it didn’t look that out-of-the-ordinary to me, but if he says so…) We removed some leaf litter, then Dr. Beamer made a tsunami, swooshing up the muck with his boots for a many-lined salamander. If you took a step back, it looked like we were actual lunatics. We snapped a few photos and talked about our other hobbies outside of herping on the way back to our cars before saying goodbye.
Chamberlains dwarf salamander
Many-lined salamanders are so hard to photograph. They just look so weird and deflated out of the water.
Many-lined salamander
Many-lined salamander habitat
As we drove to our AirBNB and thought about what to have for dinner, I had the random thought to check to see if Fayetteville, NC had an Afghan restaurant. Our absolute favorite meal is Kabuli Pulao and we’d only had it once in Washington D.C. in 2019 but talked about it ever since. I’m telling you, I’ve been on a roll with good inklings lately. Fayetteville just happened to have an amazing Afghan restaurant called Afghan Kebob. Their lamb on kabuli rice is just… so indescribably delicious! Awesome way to ring in the holidays.
Well, that was it for Greater North Carolina! It was Christmas Day and time to head to South Crackerbarrel. Sometimes we have an easy time finding the rarest salamanders, while something as common as a slimy salamander can vex us. We couldn’t find our lifer salamander on Christmas. In the afternoon we tried to see Fort Sumter National Monument, but didn’t realize it is miles off the coast and hardly visible from the shore.
It was dinnertime. And there was just one problem, it’s Christmas and no restaurants were open except Waffle House. Maybe it was all punishment for not spending Christmas in the traditional American way. Maybe we should’ve stuck a Rudolf nose on our car for the trip, at least acknowledging that it was Christmas. (bad theology?)
We reluctantly went into a Wafflehouse outside of Charleston and quickly turned around after the only employee in the entire building grouchily told us “Take-out only!” and we glimpsed at hashbrowns and pancake mix all over the place. Nathan and I got back in the car and looked at eachother like:
“That was a doozy, what now?”
“If worst comes to shove, we’ll just go down the road to the next Waffle House”.
And that’s what we did. Thankfully they ended up being a total 180 from the previous one; the workers and customers were all jolly, cutting up, and having a good time. We took-out and got to our AirBNB, hung out, and watched Slumdog Millionaire on the TV. We don’t have a TV in our house so it’s kinda nice to watch movies and football while on vacation in the evenings.
Thankfully the next day had a favorable turn of events. When we aren’t finding anything good herp-wise that’s when I occupy myself with bugs and plants. I rolled a log and found a bombardier beetle! I was so excited to see one and it even let out a few puffs of its toxic chemical defense. That startled me pretty good but I was fascinated. As I was taking a video of the beetle, Nathan hollered that he had found our South Carolina slimy salamander. That’s the way it goes, I get occupied with taking photos while Nathan off and finds our lifer salamander.
South Carolina slimy salamandersome sort of bombardier beetleNathan and Me
Savannah slimy salamander
Here’s where things get interesting. Since we found the only lifer salamander that we needed from Georgia on this trip, we had a lot of time to kill. On a lark, Nathan suggested we go mull around George L. State Park on the slight chance that we might see an Eastern diamondback rattlesnake out basking on this 80 degree day. There was a boy in a cowboy hat near the park office persistently cracking a bullwhip. Perhaps a new Christmas present he’d received? Random, but I applaud his boldness! While walking on the sandy forested trail, we saw a guy casually peering towards a log with binoculars draped from his neck.
“Have you seen any good birds today?” I asked as we came towards him on the trail.
“Oh, I was just looking at mushrooms”, he replied.
“Oh cool, you use binoculars to look for mushrooms?”
“No, I use them to look for birds.”
Oh dear, now I really did it. Trying to be friendly and it ends up being total flop… As we passed on the trail we both chuckled awkwardly. We walked back towards the parking lot through the sawmill building and I spotted a good place for a portrait of Nathan.
We snapped a few photos of eachother and saw the same guy coming back towards the sawmill too. Crap, I have to face him again. He offered to take our photo and as he was doing so, Nathan inquired about his outdoor hobbies.
“So, are you a birder? A botanist?… Herper?”
“Goodman!! You know what herping is!”
At least Nathan had some success striking up a conversation with this guy. As you can imagine, we got into an interesting discussion. We told him our names and that we were on this side of the states to further our every-salamander-in-the-US efforts. But this guy required a bit of prodding to figure out exactly who he was; very mysterious. It took some effort to figure out whether he was genuine or playing along with some game. Or maybe he thought we couldn’t handle the shock all at once…
Turns out, Roger Luckenbach is a retired biology professor from California, has led expeditions in Central America, has studied whales, sea turtles, and federally endangered Santa Cruz long-toed salamanders for quite a few years. As soon as he said their scientific name, Ambystoma macrodactylum croceum, we knew he was the real deal.
Nathan talked to him further while I went into the park gift shop to get a cool color-changing magic mug they had. Roger ended up inviting us over to the family farm to eat Christmas Dinner Round 2 and we took him up on his offer. Their home-grown butterbeans and queen sweet corn was delicious! Over dinner we talked of expeditions, whales, salamanders, Vietnam protests at UC Berkeley, and John Grisham movies. The family showed us great hospitality and we were both so blown away at the circumstances we found ourselves in.
Roger told us that he, too, ended up going to the park that afternoon on a whim. He had to drive to take the trash to the dump and figured that since he made it that far, he might as well go and check up on how the gopher tortoises were doing in their burrows. He told us that whenever we are in California next to reach out- can’t wait! What an awesome, unlikely meet-up with some great folks.
The next day was mostly driving because we had little success dip-netting any sirens. We went to a swamp that we had been to earlier in the year on our Deep South trip and found a coastal plain dwarf salamander. We grabbed a Chick-Fil-A dinner and crashed at our AirBNB.
Coastal plain dwarf salamander
Coastal plain dwarf salamander habitat
Cypress knees
The next morning we met up with our friend, Dr. Noah Mueller. The night before he had set two crawfish traps, baited with canned cajun-seasoned seafood of some sort, in a little pond created by a fallen tree in a swamp. In one of his traps was this massive two-toed amphiuma!
Massive two-toed amphiuma
Our next spot was focused on finding reptiles, but we didn’t see hardly any. Again, this is when I occupy myself with bugs and plants and such:
British soldier lichen in the dappled light
Go to the ant, thou sluggard. I loved watching these ants. They had a strange collection of tiny charcoal pieces on one side of the mound and I wonder what that’s about.
Fresh deep digger scarab beetle mound. I loved scooping up the cool sand piles that were peppered across the ground. I just loved the texture of the piles! The beetles somehow managed to put the purest, cleanest sand on the top of the pile.
There were so many spider webs!
Little tree frog
As we walked back towards the car, I did a double-take and leaned in to get a better look at weird clusters on a pine tree sapling. Right as I leaned in, I noticed there was a tiny treefrog! I call this the happiness treefrog. To find happiness, you can’t just flail around in life searching for happiness. Happiness will be found when you stop looking for it and pursue the meaningful things in life.
Noah asked us “How would you like to a go to a private biological preserve for lunch?” “Wow, sounds awesome!” So we headed down some winding sandy roads to Ashton Biological Preserve and spotted a few gopher tortoises along the way outside their burrows. The preserve was founded by Ray and Pat Ashton to protect the unique ecosystem there and also to build up the largest breeding facility for critically endangered Madagascar radiated tortoises.
When we arrived an intern, Chev, had an Eastern diamondback outside for a stroll in the sun and let us snap some photos and practice handling it with snake hooks (I’m sure I made Chev cringe with my lack of technique).
captive Eastern diamondback
Chase Pirtle gave us the grand tour of the place. It was so awesome to take a step into another world and learn so much since I’ve been out of the herpetoculture scene for years. The tortoises were so perky and came up to us as we walked from enclosure to enclosure. Chase knew all of their names and each one’s favorite place to be scratched (they can feel through all that keratin when you scratch them).
Chase told us about how for over a decade he has orchestrated the workings of this place and the challenges he deals with and has overcome. He showed us a butterfly garden, a young mini orchard, and the bins where he is growing produce for the tortoises.
“There’s the cactus I’ve been growing in elephant manure for the tortoises-“
“Did you just say elephant manure?”
“Oh yeah, my neighbor has one over there!”
This is Florida, of course, how silly of me. Least to say, Chase is quite an impressive individual who had the vision to bring the preserve and tortoise breeding program to what it is now. He has an uncanny knack for networking and make things happen successfully. Honestly, it was really cool to meet him.
We also got to see the box turtle that David Attenborough had filmed with on location for Life in Cold Blood. The founder, Ray Ashton (now deceased) had also been good friends with the Irwins in Australia and did some tortoise dealings with Bob Irwin back in the day.
I feel so lucky just to share a day in the life of these folks that we get to meet up with. We live in such an incredible time. I think the ~90 year-old folks now have seen more change in this world than anyone ever has or ever will see, but I think our time we are living in is the most prosperous time there ever has been. I try to make the most of my life and not take for granted this time that we live in.
Chase Pirtle, Nathan, and me
Leopard tortoise at Ashton Biological PreserveMe with some of the radiated tortoisesNathan with one of the radiated tortoises.
That evening we gave another shot for dip-netting sirens, but to no avail. We did accomplish catching some peninsula newts and disturbing some fishermen, though. It was getting to be around dinner time and we were starting to rather see a burger than a siren. We grabbed some Chick-Fil-A again and headed back to our AirBNB.
We got to meet our AirBNB host, Jean, and she visited with us at the dinner table. She is quite a delightful person who has done a lot of travelling, works at a hospital, and is an in-home baby nurse. I loved asking about her advice for delivering babies and the birthing process. That’s when Nathan exited the scene to go watch football. HA! I say again, I love the cool people we get to meet along our trips.
The next morning we woke up while it was still dark out to make it to a spot for the true southern dusky salamander. It is one of the last spots in Florida known to have a healthy population of them. We have already seen southern dusky salamanders, but the clade will be split up (thanks, Dr. Beamer!) in upcoming years, so we might as well make sure we have the “true” southern dusky in our pocket, so to speak. I have seen 21 of the current 22 dusky salamanders in the U.S. Most of them are… a bit drab in color, to be honest. The prospect of more of them being split up because of genetics and slight differences in appearance is a bit tantalizing.
true southern dusky salamander
Sphagnum moss, red from sun exposure (?)
After finding a couple southern dusky salamanaders, we headed with Noah Mueller to another vast swamp in search of extremely elusive one-toed amphiumas and even more secretive mud salamanders. Noah told us that even people who research one-toed amphiumas have a hard time finding them at times. You really had to watch your step, because in some areas of the swamp there could be a sudden deep spot that your boot will sink into. I have to say though, ya know, not to brag or anything, but I’m pretty proud of my swamp and cypress-knee negotiating skills. I didn’t end up like this guy who came before us and had to walk out of there… barefoot. Yeesh! Nathan and I had been to this same spot in March and it was miserable with mosquitoes and gnats. It was a huge relief that it was much cooler and bug-free this time.
One unlucky person had to walk out of the swamp… barefoot.
This whole trip I hadn’t been the one to find the “first” of anything. I was pretty much always taking photos of something else when the lifer was found. But this was my time. I flipped a perfect-looking partially-submerged log. Huh, no one-toed amphiuma. I kicked up the muck that was directly under the log’s imprint and saw a small amphiuma wiggling and weaving into the muck.
I’m sure I sounded like a chicken off in the distance to Nathan and Noah as I kept seeing it and losing it again and yelping with excitement. These things live in the mud, folks, and to boot they are super slippery and easy to lose. But miraculously I nabbed it and put the rarity in the bucket that Nathan trudged over to me. It was our goal one-toed amphiuma! Nathan and Noah found two and one more, respectively. It was pretty awesome to get that major lifer off our list.
One-toed amphima that I caught. Thanks to Dr. Mueller for letting me use his photo.
One-toed amphiuma habitat
A snappily-dressed (as Grandpa Richendollar would say) southern two-lined salamander
We sloshed in the same swamp for a couple of hours in search for an even more elusive species: the rusty mud salamander, to no avail. Nathan compared finding solely an amphiuma and no mud salamander to landing on the moon. I overheard him in the swamp telling Noah Mueller:
“Shoot for the moon [mud salamander], even if you miss you’ll land among stars [one-toed amphiumas]. In this case the moon isn’t so bad!”
“Is that a John F. Kennedy quote?” I jokingly yelled back.
We headed to the Lodge at Wakulla Springs for an early fancy dinner in our *slightly* dirty field herping clothes. I love doing out-of-the-ordinary stuff like that. We were waaay beyond the point of me fussing about untidy, stained clothes out in public. If you can’t beat’em, join’em.
The Lodge at Wakulla Springs where we ate dinner with Noah Muller
By day 7, Nathan was getting annoyed with his own CD. I had James Taylor songs “Never Die Young” and “Home By Another Way” on repeat too much, they are just such great tunes that I hadn’t head before until he put them on the CD! This day was sort of a malaise to me. I felt so groggy and just wanted to be home. The endless scene of cloudy pine and saw-palmetto was becoming abyssal. We went to St. Mark’s and walked around, sighting alligators, crabs, and birds aplenty.
American alligator at St. Mark’s
Moorhens feedingFiddler crabs and their tunnels carpeted the shore
One thing I thought about that day while driving was the obvious wild and natural urge there is in nature to grow, outcompete, live, and thrive. Rarely I wish to take a long dormancy break from life for awhile, but thank God I have never had to deal with considering giving up on life completely. As technology progresses by people caught up in urban problem, we have chilling rumors of a “metaverse” and of “suicide pods”. One that takes you away from reality and the other that takes away all responsibility and struggle for good. It is not natural and not the way God created us to set aside or abandon life, struggle, and responsibility. It is natural and normal to live, grow, and survive. It is a calloused individual who has numbed themselves to the desire of the human soul to survive, thrive, preserve life, and reach for the Light and prods others along the same sickly path of meaninglessness, encouraging people to wallow in a façade or to commit suicide instead of pursuing purpose. Anyway, gloomy thoughts from a gloomy day.
On December 31st we visited a beautiful park with tons of sphagnum moss in the dappled sunlit forest floor. We broke our record for the amount of new salamander species in one year with a Hillis’ dwarf salamander. We found a total of 25 new salamander species this year! Our previous record was in 2019 with a total of 24 lifer salamanders. In the same place as the Hillis’ dwarf salamander, I swooshed up muck with my boot and caught a small siren in the muck. I looked closely at its reticulated head and got my hopes way too stubbornly high and thought for awhile that it was a reticulated siren (one of my all-time top goal salamander species, they are so beautiful and unique). We were just a couple miles from where reticulated sirens had been caught, but the one I had in my hands turned out to be an Eastern lesser siren.
I love sphagnum moss!
I wish I could have a carpet of living sphagnum moss in my house
But for a moment in my hand I held a reticulated siren… turns out it is really an Eastern lesser siren. I got my hopes so high and it took me awhile to come to terms that it wasn’t a reticulated siren. We were only a couple miles from where they have been seen and in the same habitat.
Neon lichen on pine tree
Gulf coast mud salamander that I found just seconds after pawing through the first patch of sphagnum moss
Our last day of herping was at an absolutely beautiful place in Birmingham, AL. This kind of place absolutely energizes me and it was my favorite place of the entire trip (sorry Florida beach). I love the smell of moss-covered seeps running into rivers and leaf litter of mature deciduous forest. It was so nice to be back where there are winding roads and mountains. To boot, we found more colorful salamanders in Alabama than in the rest of the states which were focused on swamp and murky water-dwellers.
Me happy to be near clear rushing water in forested hills
While I snapped photos, Nathan searched for brownback salamanders in a small leaf-covered seepage that led into the river. It didn’t take long before he excitedly chanted “BROWN-BACK! BROWN-BACK! OB-VI-OUS! OB-VI-OUS!” and came running towards me with a male brownback salamander. I wish I had a video of that. He had been concerned that if he found a brownback that it would be questionable whether or not it was actually a Southern two-lined salamander. But the male he found was, like he said, obviously a brownback. I was caught up in getting the best shots I possibly could while Nathan also retrieved a massive Northern red and lifer Webster’s salamander.
Male brownback salamander
Male/female pair of brownback salamanders
Female brownback salamander
Webster’s salamander
The biggest Northern red salamander either of us has ever seen
Nothern red salamander in habitat. (The younger individuals are much redder.)
What a great way to wrap up a fun yet exhausting herping road trip! I’m so glad we ended the trip in such a great way in my favorite kind of place (even got to eat at a Cook-Out, one of our absolute favorites). We met up with some awesome folks and got to see some unique critters. We left Birmingham with 80 degree weather and arrived home to Missouri with snow on the ground.
Arizona has been in my mind ever since I was little and learned about all of the cool reptiles that live there. I would check out dozens of books from the library to admire the landscape and all of the cool reptiles and amphibians that live there. This year Nathan secretly planned a 4-day herping trip out west during monsoon season for my 24th birthday. The secret almost slipped! Nathan hid the hand-written itinerary in the thickest, most boring economics book on our bookshelves. Well, I about gave him a heart attack (he kept a good poker-face, though) when he saw that I had the same book out to sit on while sewing curtains! And that was the first time I started sewing in our marriage! Crazy! But I never saw the itinerary and it never slipped out of the book, much to his relief. Nathan also put together a CD of favorite western songs featuring Marty Robbins and Dean Brody for the trip and hid it behind some books.
Disney vacation-planners got nothin’ on Nathan! He has always been very meticulous about planning an itinerary for any herping trip to maximize the amount of new species we can see in one trip. This is an especially useful skill because it is our goal to see every species of salamander in the United States. Most of our trips are salamander-focused, but Nathan planned this trip a little differently because he knows that, overall, I’m more fond of reptiles than amphibians.
Me and Nathan in Oklahoma before road cruising for western massasauga rattlesnakes
snow-on-the-mountain spurge
The first day heading west, we stopped at my childhood favorite sub shop, Blimpie, to get some subs for the road and head on to our first road-cruising spot in western Oklahoma. We saw a speckled kingsnake, DOR (dead-on-road) massasauga rattlesnake, and a woodhouse’s toad.
What the surrounding landscape lacked in tall trees and greenery, it made up for in vibrant color, contrast, and texture of the vegetation and soil color. I was in awe! When it was dark out, we were out in the middle of nowhere road cruising for snakes when a huge aircraft flying low came up straight behind us and lifted off higher into the air. I think they just did that to get a good startle out of us. Whew!
Nathan drove through the night to get to the Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico in the morning to see the only salamander of the trip: an endemic Sacramento Mountain salamander.
Sacramento Mountain Salamander, one of the last members of the genus Aneides that we have left to see.
The “sky island” of the Sacramento Mountains is a stark contrast to the lower elevation’s harsh landscape scattered with yuccas and ocotillo cactus everywhere. It was about 72 degrees down in the desert morning and a chilly 52 degrees once we reached the mountain habitat of the salamander. There were hummingbirds buzzing all around and elk tracks imprinted in soft trail.
Scarlet trumpet
When we reached our AirBNB in Animas, New Mexico, we unloaded our things from the car and saw a gopher snake taking rest in the shade of the building. This place was an oasis out in the middle of nowhere. We took a mid-day nap to catch up on sleep before meeting up with Rob and Nicholas (Smetlogik on Youtube) at the Portal Cafe.
I’ve bantered back and forth with Smetlogik for about a decade or so on Youtube and online forums- back in the good ole’ days of the Herping With Dylan Forum (for the select few of you herpers who ever participated in that now bygone herping forum). It was so great to finally meet the two of them! They are super hard-core herpers and have a successful comedic and educational YouTube Channel sharing their herping adventures with the world. At the cafe they bought us dinner and we ate while swapping stories and bantering on about the correct pronunciation of “in situ“. Rob made a hilarious and informative video on the topic that you can see here.
Me, Nathan, Rob, and Nicholas all excited as can be to do some herping!
Rob strategized that if we drive in separate vehicles, we’d be able to cover more ground. When it was past dusk, the roads were busy with many other herpers from out-of-state, namely California, who also came to this hotspot in peak season for the iconic reptiles that would be out that night. We saw several western diamondbacks, mojave rattlesnakes, couch’s spadefoot toads, one desert kingsnake, green ratsnake, and gophersnake that night. Even though the roads were busy with other herp enthusiasts, it was really neat being in a collective effort to see and share sightings.
We turned in at about midnight, still early for road cruising, but we were super tired from the overnight drive the previous night. Our AirBNB was in a location known for some of the darkest skies in the U.S. so that was really special.
Juvenile desert kingsnakeA green ratsnake that I quickly photographed. Our new friends Jeff and Dave found this one on the road and were taking their own photos of it.Couch’s spadefoot- the only animal in the universe that you can reasonably say while road-cruising “Can’t be a toad, it’s too fat and round!”
The next day we ate a quick breakfast of cereal that I had brought and then headed out again in the morning to poke around a little before meeting up with Rob and Nicholas again to try our hand at finding the rock rattlesnake, my top goal species besides the gila monster lizard. They come out in the late morning once the sun reaches into the canyon to bask. Nathan spotted a mandrean alligator lizard which I caught and photographed. Didn’t expect that cool find!
A beautiful blue fungus beetle found out crawling in the scrubby canyon forestNathan in the canyon stream before meeting up with Rob and Nicholas for the morning
Mandrean alligator lizard that Nathan found
It wasn’t too much later that Nathan found a banded rock rattlesnake! Our group had split up to cover more ground and so I had to sprint a good way across cobblestones in my gaiters as fast as I could to make sure I could get a glimpse of it before it potentially slithered away. Thankfully, it was still visible when I reached Nathan. I cannot explain just how beautiful and vibrant the pattern of that snake was. I couldn’t unlock my eyes from such a beautiful snake as that one. The camouflage was just spectacular because it was the exact colors as the surrounding rocks, lichens, and moss. The contrast of the mint green against the dark moss-green of the bands was absolutely astounding, not to mention the pink blushing coming up the side of its body. This was the prettiest reptile I had ever seen in the wild. It had that sort of “freshly-shed” vibrancy to it. I hate saying this cliché term and I never have except for this moment in time- the photos just don’t do it justice.
The best find of the trip, a banded rock rattlesnake
We hiked and excitedly talked for a couple more hours in search of more banded rock rattlesnakes, but the one pictured above ended up being our one and only for the trip. We crossed paths with a group of birders who loudly told us to shush. Evidently we were disrupting good birding. In addition to the grouchy birder group, we also met a large college group from Mississippi who we ran into the previous night on the road when they were stopped for a couch’s spadefoot. We talked a little and Rob put a plug-in for his Youtube Channel in case any of the kids were interested. Our last naturalist friend that we met on the trail was Scott, a sinewy, salt-and-pepper haired man from Tuscan who described to me what gorgeous and vibrant critters the blacktail rattlesnakes are with their mustard-yellow color.
We made it back to the trailhead and said goodbye to Rob and Nicholas and waited for dusk to start road cruising. We hope to introduce them to our stomping grounds and a totally different habitat, the Appalachian Mountains, to look for salamanders with them.
Me next to a huge agave that hummingbirds were sipping from that morning
That night we road cruised a beautiful Northern blacktail rattler in the canyon before the roads got too cool then hit the roads that received more sunlight during the day. This was the best night of road cruising we’ve ever had. In the east it is much harder to road cruise for snakes with that amount of success. It seemed like every couple of minutes we were seeing at least something!
Throughout the day Nathan kept track of where any monsoon was moving and decided we should hit the highway heading south to see some critters that the monsoon brought out. When it was fully dark we road-cruised several HUGE Sonoran desert toads, so many western diamondbacks that I coined the phrase “Diamond Dozen”, mojave rattlers, gopher snakes, a desert kingsnake, couch’s spadefoot toads, and a DOR Mexican hognose snake. There were also plenty of desert mice here and there that were crossing the roads which was a good sign to us that there was plenty of food out for our target species.
Northern blacktail rattlesnake found in the canyon at twilight. I am told that daytime is a much better time to see their mustard-yellow vibrancy.
Sonoran desert toad (also known as Colorado river toads further north in their range)
Me excited to finally see a Sonoran desert toad
What a fun night of road cruising on my birthday! As we were driving up to our Dark Sky AirBNB, we both saw a green fireball meteor!
On our way into the next morning we saw a young mountain lion and some javelina hogs. We did a little bit of hiking further up the canyon and ran into one of our new friends, Dave, who showed us a “bitchin'” spot for rock rattlesnakes where he had seen them earlier. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to turn up any more. We road cruised for horned lizards outside of the canyon. We teamed up with a witty herper named Will to cover more ground. He revealed his plan to us to leave his dozen or so cleverly painted fake snakes made of string on the road to fool other herpers that night.
Together we teamed up and road cruised a male and female desert box turtle, a Mexican spadefoot toad, and a black-necked gartersnake. It was time to say goodbye to Arizona and head to our AirBNB in rural New Mexico to settle in before another night of road cruising.
Male desert box turtle found on a gravel road outside the canyon in Arizona
After settling in at our AirBNB and eating dinner at an A&W for my first time, we hit the road at twilight to try and find 6 of our target snakes. The landscape was extremely flat and boring except for the mountains in the far distance. It took us about an hour and a half before we saw anything whatsoever and at times it felt like we were driving in an abyss because the landscape was so vast that it didn’t really feel like we were covering much distance.
When you’re road cruising and desperate for something to finally be on the road, you have to remember to blink! We pulled up a podcast on our phone to listen to and keep our brains occupied. Our first find of the night was a night snake, followed closely thereafter by a prairie rattler! It wasn’t long until we were really cookin’ with Martha! In total we found 5 of the 6 goal species that we were after. We think that because it had gotten so hot that day, the snakes came out later than usual when the roads and temperatures finally cooled down in the low 80’s/ high 70’s.
Beautiful little prairie rattlesnake
Hooknose snakes have a bizarre way of avoiding predators called “cloacal popping”- they literally fart to scare predators away.
glossy snake
nightsnake
The hot dog of that night’s road cruising- a beautiful longnose snake!
The next morning we unsuccessfully tried our hand at longnosed leopard lizards and horned lizards, but we did see a monsterous western diamondback basking in the morning light! I was thrilled to get some good photos because the only other shots I had of the species was of them on the road at night, not the best picture material.
A western diamondback rattlesnake in the morning light in New Mexico
Apache Plume shrub from New Mexico looks like Missouri’s prairie smoke perennial plant
Cool town name in New Mexico heading home (there was another town further north named Elephant Butte)
Driving through the vast expanse of desert across states reminds me what a fortunate time we live in where we can travel great distances safely, quickly, and at very little cost. Isn’t that such a testament to the great country and time we live in? I am so grateful for the life we live and I want to be a part of preserving this American way of life for the next generations to enjoy too. We shouldn’t take our freedoms for granted; it is hard-fought for but can slip through our hands if we squander our privileges and blessings and do nothing to preserve this freedom for the next generations.
Nathan and I were sure fortunate to see some awesome plants and critters in our time out west! We even got to meet some awesome herpers and naturalists on our trip. When we got back home to Missouri, it didn’t take Nathan long to start scheming our next Arizona trip!
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