Herpedex: All the Herps I Have Seen In The Wild: boneyard creek

Friday, 3 April 2015

Herping in Boneyard Creek, UIUC

Midland Painted Turtle: PC Yatin Kalki

Date:
April 2nd 2015

Species Found:

Plains Garter Snake (Thamnophis radix)
Midland Painted Turtle (Chrysemys picta marginata)

The Trip:

I had been to Boneyard Creek, behind Engineering Hall many times to catch Plains Garter Snakes. I usually found them under stone slabs or sunning themselves in the grass. I was doing a Mark-Recapture study where I caught the snakes, measured them, marked them with a permanent marker and released them. The previous day I had caught 7 Garter Snakes and that day I caught 11 of them. The smallest one I caught was 26 cm long.

Baby Plains Garter Snakes: PC Yatin Kalki

Baby Plains Garter Snakes: PC Yatin Kalki

The longest ones I caught were 62 cm long. One was a male and the other was a gravid female.

Plains Garter Snakes: PC Yatin Kalki

Plains Garter Snakes: PC Yatin Kalki

Plains Garter Snakes: PC Yatin Kalki

I was about to head home for the day when I remembered that a professor had found a Painted Turtle in the creek a few days earlier. I went down to the water and looked around for a turtle. Soon I saw a medium sized Painted Turtle in the water by the bank. I went closet to it and it went under. I sat by the bank and waited for it to surface again for air. After 5 minutes it did as expected and I scooped it up in my net. This was my first turtle in America so I was pretty happy. It was very colorful, with red streaks on its body and on the edges of its shell. It also had yellow streaks on its head.

Midland Painted Turtle: PC Yatin Kalki

Midland Painted Turtle: PC Yatin Kalki

Midland Painted Turtle: PC Yatin Kalki

Midland Painted Turtle: PC Yatin Kalki

Midland Painted Turtle: PC Yatin Kalki

Midland Painted Turtle: PC Yatin Kalki

I found one new species, putting my American Herp List at 45 species.

Monday, 16 March 2015

Garter Snakes On UIUC Campus

Date:
March 16th 2015

Species Found:

Plains Garter Snake (Thamnophis radix)

Background:

From the first week of college in August 2014, I had heard about the elusive Garter Snakes that apparently lived right in the middle of campus. Many people had stories about these snakes jumping out of the bushes and scaring students or about the snakes getting into buildings and creating problems. Fewer people had actually got pictures of them or knew how to find them. Throughout my first semester at UIUC, I must have made 10-15 trips to the small strip of land between Engineering Hall and Boneyard Creek where people had seen these snakes before. I had found about a dozen shed skins but no snakes.

Shed Skin of Plains Garter Snake: PC Yatin Kalki

Spring had arrived and we had had at least 4 days of warm weather. It was a new semester and a new season so I decided to try and find these snakes again.

The Trip:

I checked for basking snakes on the sunny rocks that ran alongside the creek but found nothing. I checked on all the sunny rocks that were in between the building and the creek and found nothing. When I was just about to give up, I thought of checking the shady rocks that were right behind the building. To my surprise, there were 2 medium sized Garter Snakes coiled up and resting out in the open on some large, flat rocks. Tristan was supposed to meet me there to help me look for them but I had found them before he even got there. I picked one up and left the other one there for Tristan to get his 'in situ' photograph. He arrived soon after and we started taking photos.