An Epic Day of Salamandering in Vermillion County IL

Hey guys!
I drove two and a half hours south of Chicago to look underneath railroad cross-ties and rocks for salamanders. Yes, that is the farthest I personally have driven for herps. Yes, it even beats the 8 hours down to Southern Illinois from back in August, but that's only because I didn't drive much. Anyways, I got up, ate pancakes and started driving. Once I was driving down back roads of Kankakee and Iroquois Counties, I kept my eye out for dead snakes on the road, like Eastern Hognose or a Bullsnake. No snakes, but I did see a roadkill Red Fox which was sad. Once I finally got to my spot, I got super excited because I had the possibility to get 4 salamander lifers, which would tie me for first place in number of salamander species seen in Illinois in 2020. I got out and was immediately greeted by Carolina Chickadees (one I don't get in Chicago) and a Pileated Woodpecker. I started walking, and once I got down the path to a place where all of my research led me to, I started flipping. I was looking for a Southern Two-lined, but I didn't find one. I continued along the bottom of the ravine, occasionally walking up the hillside to flip a cross-tie or rock. Finally, I hit the jackpot and found the least expected salamander of the trip a FOUR-TOED! I wasn't able to come up with an exact location for them, but I got super lucky and the place I was at happened to be the only place in eastern Illinois to find the species. I got some pics, and I kept on going. I found my state lifer Eastern Red-backed, which put my list for Illinois up to 13. A few more Four-toeds and Red-backeds were next, and then my brother flipped a very big and nice Spotted. The orange head spots were super vibrant. It was the biggest maculatum I've ever seen. Then I flipped a big rock, and a I saw the biggest salamander I've ever seen underneath it. It was my second variant of the Unisexual Mole Salamander, the 'Silvery" Salamander. I think it used to be considered to be it's own species, but now it isn't. I'd say it was a good 9.5-10 inches long. (You can really see the differences between the 'Tremblay's' we have up in Chicago, which are smaller and darker gray as they've had decades to breed with the Blue-spotteds up there. This one was a really light gray with faint blue spotting, which is really cool because it looks much more like the Jefferson which was one of the original parent species that created the hybrid complexes.) After I saw that, I saw a Plethodonid run over the 'Silvery' and I thought it was a Red-backed. I grabbed it and set it down on the moss with the 'Silvery' to take pictyres of when I realized that it had a wide dorsal stripe, reddish "armpits" and red running down the length of the tail. It was a NORTHERN ZIGZAG SALAMANDER! That was lifer number two of the day! I was completely not expecting to see one at all, and it was awesome to see 2 more throughout the trip there. We found another Spotted, which was about the same size as the 'Silvery' we had. That one was super cool. We found more Four-toed, Red-backeds, and then we decided to leave. The only salamander we missed there was Marbled, which would've been really cool to see.

We went to another spot nearby to look for Small-mouthed Salamander, but came up with a couple Eastern Red-backed and another Zigzag Salamander. It was really cool to see the research "circles" where INHS does research on the Unisexual Mole Salamanders. With light quickly fading, we still wanted to get a Small-mouthed Salamander, so we drove over to Champaign to a very well known spot for them. Right off the bat we found them as our third and final lifers of the day.

Then it was time for me to drive home and eat some substantial food, not just an apple and a granola bar. It was an epic trip, and I hope to make it down there again next spring!

Funny thing is, that night when I was uploading all of my pictures here, I noticed that my friend Jared (@wildlandblogger) was there too. I noticed that he was just a quarter mile away from where I was, and at the same time. Bummer we didn't get to both see the Hemidactylums and Zigzags, and it would've been nice to thank him in person for all of the help with our trip to southern Illinois. Oh well, I guess we'll see each other some other time.

That;s all for now,
Simon

Publicado el 26 de octubre de 2020 a las 07:41 PM por brdnrdr