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| Eastern Milk Snake: PC Tristan Schramer |
Date:
September 13th 2014
New Species Found:
- Western Slender Glass Lizard (Ophiosaurus a. attenuatus)
- Six Lined Racerunner (Aspidoscelis sexlineata)
- Fowler's Toad (Bufo fowleri)
- Eastern Gray Tree Frog (Hyla versicolor)
- Bull Snake (Pituophis catenifer sayi)
- Eastern Milk Snake (Lampropeltis triangulum triangulum)
Background:
It had been about 3 weeks since I had left my home in Bangalore, India and started my undergraduate degree in Wildlife Conservation at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I was going herping with Tristan and Noah, two fellow herpers I had met at a Wildlife Club meeting a week earlier. Tristan had been herping in the Midwest for most of his life and he had found a lot of the native species, impressive considering he was just a freshman like myself. He had loads of experience with Illinois herps so he was a useful guide to have on my first herping trip in the United States. Noah was a senior Integrative Biology major. He had herped a little here and there but his specialty was birds. He had worked in Panama the earlier semester with migratory birds. He knew a good deal about the native snakes too (a lot more than I did at the time) and he had a car, without which we wouldn't be able to find anything.
The Trip:
Tristan had been to Kankakee sometime before but he had gone in the Spring while we were going in the Fall. He had the GPS coordinates of all the species he had found last time and he was keen to look in the same spots again. Last time he had found a Glass Lizard in a thicket right next to the parking area and sure enough, this time there was a Glass Lizard not 30 feet from where we parked the car. It was in a thorny bush, sitting right next to a burrow so when we tried to catch it, it disappeared underground. I couldn't even get a good look at it, much less a photo.
We moved on through the forest and started following a trail, where Noah spotted a small lizard curled up in hole left by a deer's hoof. It was a juvenile Six Lined Racerunner. It was cold outside and the sunlight was patchy so the lizard wasn't its usual speedy self. It was sluggish and made a feeble attempt to escape when we picked it up
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| Six Lined Racerunner: PC Tristan Schramer |
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| Six Lined Racerunner: PC Tristan Schramer |
While we were walking to some of the spots where Tristan had found herps before, he spotted a Fowler's Toad hopping through the dewy grass. He caught it and explained to me the difference between the Fowler's and the American Toad, the other toad species found there.
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| Fowler's Toad: PC Tristan Schramer |
As we were photographing the toad, we found another little amphibian. It was an Eastern Gray Tree Frog hanging out on a damp, discarded tire. Tristan moved it to a more natural setting (a tree) and proceeded to take some photos.
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| Eastern Gray Tree Frog: PC Tristan Schramer |
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| Eastern Gray Tree Frog: PC Tristan Schramer |
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| Eastern Gray Tree Frog: PC Tristan Schramer |
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| Eastern Gray Tree Frog: PC Tristan Schramer |
We moved deeper into the Park we came across many piles of debris and rubbish. Tristan said that the large objects like tin sheets and tires offered good artificial cover for herps, so we proceeded to flip all the debris we came across. We found about 10-20 more Six Lined Racerunners but could only catch a few as they were all really fast with the heat they had absorbed from the sun, which was blazing by then. Tristan flipped a large carpet and found a juvenile Bull Snake that was about 2 ft long. It hissed and struck at him when he picked it up by the tail but it was quick to calm down when it realized we weren't hurting it. I was really excited because this was my first snake in the US. I held it and when I was confident it was not going to bite, I let it crawl all over me, even my face. Tristan wanted to photograph it curled up and ready to strike but the Bull Snake didn't want to sit still for a picture. Even when Tristan tired to provoke it into getting into the "strike pose" it just didn't see his hand as a threat. He then used a method I had never seen before to get the snake to coil up. He cupped his hands over the snake, shading it out and trapping it between the floor and his palms. When he no longer felt the snake nudging against his hand to get free, he removed his hand and there the snake was, coiled up with all body parts in the shot. We took some pictures and let the Bull Snake go back under its carpet.
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| Bull Snake: PC Tristan Schramer |
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| Bull Snake: PC Tristan Schramer |
We tried a few more spots where Tristan had found Blue Racers before, but had no luck. We decided to try looking in a nearby junkyard where a friend of Tristan's had found a Hognosed Snake sometime in the past, so we got back in the car and drove there. That place was really a dump. There was a broken down trailer and a whole house with all its parts lying in a radius around its foundation. Roof tiles, drywall, glass panes and tin sheets lay strewn about. I wondered how any animals would be able to survive in such an environment, but Tristan assured me that we would find something if we just kept flipping the debris. We found a few more Racerunners and Fowler's Toads but it wasn't till late evening that we found a snake. I had just caught a Fowler's Toad and I called Tristan over to log its GPS coordinates. As he was walking over, he kicked a large piece of rubber and underneath it was a gorgeous baby Eastern Milk Snake. We forgot all about the Fowler's Toad as we took turns examining the colorful 1 ft snake. I couldn't get over how smooth and shiny its scales were and how the red and white color pattern was so unlike any of the snakes I had seen before. The checkerboard belly and the little white heart it had on its head made it all the more intriguing. Needless to say, the baby Eastern Milk Snake is one of my favorite snakes in the world.
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| Eastern Milk Snake: PC Tristan Schramer |
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| Eastern Milk Snake: PC Tristan Schramer |
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| Checkerboard Underbelly: PC Tristan Schramer |
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| Heart shape on head: PC Tristan Schramer |
We decided to head back to campus after we released the Milk Snake back under its rubber sheet. I had opened up my American Herp List with 6 species and I had 6 new ones to add to my Life List. All in all, it had been a very good herping trip and it left me craving more.
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