Catch Up post #2 of 3: Snake Road!

[KUJordan]

I went with a good friend and my stepdad and met a bunch of herpers for a weekend at the magical place known as "Snake Road." I had been there 3 years ago, but didn't have a digital camera, only a video camera which I later broke. I was so anxious to get there the drive seemed like it took so much longer than it actually did. There were a few neat animals I wanted to see there that I struck out on my first trip a few years ago, these were the black racer, eastern hognose, green and bird voiced tree frog, northern copperhead, and rough green. This trip didn't disappoint! Of course, the cottonmouths outnumbered everything about 15 to 1.

So the weather making things miserable wasn't a mystery, but I definitely found what I wanted to find and then some even though the raw numbers weren't what I expected.

The first night we arrived, things started with a LIFER for me- we found a large beautiful A.c.mokasen, northern copperhead DOR just outside our campsite!

Here's the first cottonmouth I got a decent pic of on the road:

This snake had no desire to display the typical cottonmouth disposition:

I liked the banding on towards the end of this cottonmouth:

After more cottons and a few sallies and newts, Kevin found this nice bronze frog (lifer):

Followed by this nice pair of non-zigzagging zigzags:

Next was the only rough green I was able to see this trip, a LIFER!:

Here is the first of 2 Mississippi greens I saw:

After we had walked about 2/3 of the road, we decided that not much was moving so we decided to head back to the vehicle on the north end. This was a good decision because not far from the north gate I found my favorite find of the trip. I was walking on the west side of the road and I just heard the rustling of leaves and quickly saw the tail of a large black snake. I dropped the camera and took off through the woods after it (where I'm thinking I got my poison ivy). It finally stopped the chase and decided to go ahead and battle me, and to my pleasure it was a gorgeous southern black racer, around 5' long and a lifer for me!

I later flipped this nice looking black rat. I hope someone got a picture of its belly pattern!:

Green treefrogs were numerous, a LIFER!:

This is the other MG I found by the pond:

The group getting their shots:

We later came across this neonate rat snake:

We flipped a large log and Mike P spotted this central newt eft:

I came across this large cotton in the middle of the trail we walked:

We found this well camouflaged cotton hiding in the grass, showing why we didn't do naked barrel rolls down the trail:

And one last cottonmouth- this was the pretties yearling we found on the trip:

And a parting shot of the group on sunday (this was near, but NOT AT SNAKE ROAD:

Thanks again guys! I hope you all enjoyed looking through my pics!

 

[Ted]

fantastic!!
good work, all the way around!
thanks for sharing those!:clap:

 

[cgrinter]

I miss that road! That is an amazing area, hope to get back there some day.

 

[Canth]

Awesome, threads, Jordan! You always show a little bit of everything It took me awhile to find the snake in that one grass shot because I wasn't looking for a green one. Why was it green?

Those L. variolus in the previous threads were gorgeous. I loved the pattern on the juvie. Makes me wish I still had some.

 

[KUJordan]

All of the marshes there in the area we were looking for snakes in are 100% covered in duckweed. When the nerodia and cottonmouths leave the water, the duckweed covers their backs, so they look almost metallic green.

Those L. variolus are nice. They're the only Latro in my immediate area, but they sure are everywhere. Those two particular spiders were under the same branch about 8" apart. They were 2 of about 30 I found that afternoon! I only have to go about 25 minutes south to get L. mactans in good solid numbers though. Too bad L. variolus are so finicky when it comes to captive breeding...