Green Eggs and Herps

I scanned my headlamp across the glittering surface of an enormous wall of lichen-covered sandstone.  I felt like a contortionist as I twisted my head in order to peer into every crack and dimple in the stone's face.  Eventually, I reached a long crevice that separated two of the immense rocky outcroppings.  The crevice was little more than an inch wide, and grew progressively tighter the farther back I looked.  My small headlamp illuminated different degrees of rock as I moved along, casting the surroundings into deep shadow.  All of a sudden, my light fell on the elongate body of an amphibian.  The salamander was small, only a few inches in length.  Its skin was covered in little, splotchy markings—but were they green markings?  I quickly turned off my light, not wanting to scare the creature away before I could be positive what it was.

A northern slimy salamander.

At that moment, I heard Carl’s muffled voice from the other side of the ridge top.  “I found one!”  he called.  I left my snake stick as a marker, and rushed to the rock face where he was searching.  “I didn't get a great look, but it’s a big one,” Carl said as he rummaged through his backpack for his camera equipment.  As he started snapping shots of the salamander, the flash revealed the creature’s glistening black-body and light colored markings.  The longer we looked, however, the more apparent it became that the makings were not in fact green, but white.  “It’s a slimy,” Carl corrected.  Plethodon glutinosus: not our green, but still an interesting find.  At several inches in length, it was the biggest northern slimy salamander I had ever seen.  

Carl and I had traveled down to southeastern Ohio to search for the state-endangered green salamander.  “Each of these ridges with exposed rock should have them,”  Carl explained, pointing out hotspots on his topographic map.  He had searched this location in past years with a 100% success rate.  I had looked for green salamanders once before with no luck.   Read about my adventure in The Henslow’s Sparrow and the Search for the Green Salamander.  This time, I felt good about our odds.

Green salamanders are a curious species.  They occur in Ohio at the extreme northern tip of their range, only extending into a few southern most counties.  They inhabit the crevices of limestone and sandstone cliffs in forested areas.  Often wedged deep within the rock’s pockmarked visage, the salamanders take some ingenuity to find.  

I led Carl back to the fissure where I had discovered the little, freckled salamander moments earlier.  He took one look with his flashlight and confirmed, “That’s exactly what we are looking for!  A green salamander!”  We sat hunched over for the next 20 minutes, angling our cameras so the flash would hit the salamander just right.  Photographing in such tight quarters is no easy task.  The salamander was small for a green.  At only a few inches in length, it was likely a hatchling from the previous year.  

To finally have a green salamander at hand was a relief.  Ever since my efforts had been thwarted a few months prior, I had been counting down the days until I could hunt for them again.  On this search, I was determined to check every stretch of rock, even if it took all day. Finding our green turned out to be much easier than I had anticipated.  This was only the second series of rocks we had checked, and I found the little salamander just minutes into our search.  It sat parallel to the vertical rock wall, calmly ignoring my light.  Some green salamanders grow nervous when illuminated, retreating deeper into the rock.  Its body was purple-ish black with yellow-green markings similar to the lichens that cover its abode.  It would have been easy to overlook.

Green Salamander Habitat.

As we hiked on, we continued to scan each large stretch of rock for salamanders.  “The tiny cracks that reach deep into the stone are good places to check,” Carl explained.  Salamanders (and most herps for that matter) tend to hide in spaces just big enough for their own bodies to fit.  This keeps them hidden and prevents larger predators from entering.  At most of the holes I examined, I was met with the bizarre, curled body of a large species of cave cricket.  Below overhangs of stone, where sandy soil had been deposited, we found the funnel traps of ant lions (small larval insects that dig pits to trap prey).  As we came to one rounded slab of stone, we hit pay dirt.  Along a section that stretched several meters, we found four more small green salamanders!

As we photographed and marveled at our luck, Carl made another fascinating discovery.  Hanging from the ceiling of one rock crevice were several green salamander eggs!  Green salamander mothers will remain with their clutch until they hatch.  The mother was likely hidden behind the egg mass, out of our line of sight.  Green eggs usually hatch by September, so finding a clutch was a real surprise.  Green salamanders skip the tadpole stage (direct development) and emerge from eggs as miniature adults.  The hatchlings may remain with their mother for a few weeks and reach sexual maturity by year three.

Green salamander eggs.

We had found our target species for the day: the rare and beautiful green salamander. I couldn't have been happier.  Across their limited Ohio range, green salamanders likely occur in most areas with suitable sandstone cliffs.  Much of their habitat is hidden away on private lands, limiting the number of populations herpetologists can discover.  The rough, rocky terrain that suits these amphibians will hopefully protect their homes from being demolished or developed.  

As we were preparing to head home, Carl decided to drive the final stretch of road we were parked along.  The day was warm and cloudy—perfect for reptile movement.  The paved road was a light, uniform gray.  Anything on it would jump out like a sore thumb.  As we crept along, the asphalt seemed to radiate with potential.  We both saw the snake at the same moment.  

I never would have guessed what we found.

To be continued. . .

Henslow's Sparrow and the Search for the Green Salamander

As we drove down 33 towards our impact site, Marcel’s phone was buzzing, continuously overlapping the GPS directions with updates and messages.  A typical field season morning.  One of the messages was from an enthusiastic Dr. Popescu, telling us that his former PhD Adviser, Mac Hunter, would be in town and wanted to see some of our turtles.  We agreed on a date to show off our animals and newly developed telemetry skills, and a week later headed over to OU’s Life Sciences Building to introduce ourselves.

Front to back: Aram Calhoun, Viorel Popescu, Mac Hunter

Mac walked up to me and shook my hand.  He was a tall man, well over six feet, with a lined, rough face.  He reminded me of a mountain, wise, quiet, and perpetually watching the world.  His wife, Aram Calhoun, on the other hand was petite, little more than five feet tall with a contagious enthusiasm.  It struck me that these two had seen the world.  They weren't just travelers, they had studied, examined, and pondered everything they had come across.  Even after years of field work, wildlife was still what fueled them.  They hadn't lost their energy and excitement for the new and unexpected.  They hopped from country to country, and continent to continent seeking out that illusive lifer, or that pesky nemesis.  

A blue grosbeak surveys the fields below.

While traveling the globe in search of every bird family on earth, Mac and Aram had stopped in Athens to see Dr. Popescu and his new lab.  Of the give-or-take 200 bird families, they only had one more to see: a family of creepers in the Philippines.  On their birding extravaganza, they were also recording and identifying everything else they could find—families and species of mammals, fish, reptiles, amphibians, trees, ferns, etc.  They were the kind of scientists who had done it all and seen it all.

After a successful day showing off our turtles, they invited me to come along birding and herping with them the following morning.  I eagerly accepted.  On their target list was the rare Henslow’s sparrow and the state endangered green salamander.  I had never seen either of these species, and was ecstatic at the chance to accompany their search.  

Dr. Popescu picked me up around 6:30 a.m. the following morning, and the four of us drove to Anderson Meadows where the Henslow’s sparrow had recently been reported.  Our van rattled down an old gravel road which opened up into a vast grassland.  As I stepped out of the car, Aram pointed out the call of a bobwhite quail.  I listened as a whistling bob-white, bob-white sounded from the tall grass not far from where we stood.  Dr. Popescu and I exchanged thrilled looks—neither of us had heard the call of a bobwhite before.  It was going to be a good day.

Mac and Aram had brought along a recording of the Henslow’s song to try to entice the bird to fly in.  “The field guides describe it as an unremarkable, two-syllable song,” Aram explained.  Unremarkable was an understatement.  The call was a quiet tsi-lik, lasting little more than a second.  If a bird was singing, identifying the call wasn't the problem, hearing it over the wind and other song birds was.

As we walked down the path, scanning with our eyes and straining our ears, we heard that quiet call, tsi-lik.  Then we heard another, to our right this time. Tsi-lik.  And another.  Tsi-lik.  The birds were all around us.  Binoculars and cameras flew to our eyes as we scanned the grass, searching for movement.  Suddenly, a small, brown bird whizzed over the field and perched on a low shrub.  It was a sparrow, but was it the Henslow’s?  The bird threw back its head and instead of singing tsi-lik, gave a long, insect-like buzz.  “A grasshopper sparrow,” Aram IDed, “also an unusual field species.”  It wasn't our Henslow’s, but it was still a treat.

The rare Henslow's sparrow perches at the tip of a branch.

Our little menagerie of birders finally decided to hike into the field from which the birds were calling.  It was our best chance of seeing a Henslow’s sparrow close enough to identify.  We would have to be slow and silent, and hope that the sparrow would fly to a perch and call.  Grassland birds are much more inclined to run through the brush than fly. 

We fanned out to cover more ground.  I made it within several feet of the calling birds but couldn't get a clear look at them.  After seeing a few fly in the distance, Mac and Aram decided they would mark the Henslow’s sparrow BVD—better view desired.  Then, as we were heading back out to the trail, a Henslow’s sparrow flew right in front of us and perched 20 feet away on a shrub.  We all gasped; it was a fantastic look.  The sparrow even allowed us to edge closer, within 10 feet or so.

With a rare lifer bird to start the morning, we were confident in our prospects of finding a green salamander.  An hour later, we arrived at our destination.  The weather was cool, cloudy, and humid.  If ever there was a day for salamanders, it was today.  

Green salamanders are limited to a few counties in extreme southern Ohio.  These secretive amphibians live in the crevices of limestone and sandstone cliffs.  Their pattern of green flecking allows them to merge perfectly with the green lichens that cover their abode.  During the day, green salamanders remain hidden, tucked away in narrow, moist cracks in the stone’s face.  By night they venture out to hunt for insects and other invertebrates.  

An American toad wedged within the rocks.

As we hiked through the trees, we were quickly confronted by an enormous looming wall of brittle sandstone.  The stone’s surface was pockmarked with holes and crevices, plenty of places for a salamander to hide.  Our team split the rock-face into sections for each of us to search.  Flashlights and phones illuminated the cliff as we peered into crevice after crevice, each time hoping for a little, green face to be looking back at us.

“This is what diving is like, looking in all these rock crevices,” Aram told me.  We searched the cliffs as thoroughly as any herpetologist could.  On two occasions we thought we had found our green salamander, only to realize it was lichen or rocks under closer inspection.  We found other amphibians, an american toad and a pickerel frog, wedged within the stones.  But in the end, we came up empty.  

A pickerel frog lurks under a ledge in the rock-face.

“It might just be too dry,” Dr. Popescu suggested.  It had been a warm week, and there hadn't been any rain.  The salamanders had likely worked their way deeper into the porous rocks in search of moisture.  It was disappointing not to see the green salamander, but two rare lifers in one day was a tall order to fill.  I knew the location and the habitat; I’d be back when conditions were more favorable.

Spending the day with such seasoned nature veterans was a dream come true.  I had learned so much just listening to Mac and Aram’s stories.  The world beyond Ohio felt much more real—a place I could actually visit and explore one day.