9-25-04

Trip Details

Herpers: Matt Ricklefs, Jim Scharosch

Location: Jackson County, Iowa

Time: 12:00 pm

Temp/Conditions: Sunny, 75 degrees.

We decided to take a trip to look for some fall rattlesnakes at an area we check often. We got a late start, but the weather looked good and it seems like the snakes should be bound for the bluffs by now. We were going to work the back side of the area, a place we had explored for the first time earlier this spring.

Things don't always go as planned. Some trips we go on never get posted to the site because we don't find much. This was one of those trips. I got a couple decent photos though, so I thought I would post them.

Under a rock, I found a couple of cold Five-Lined Skinks (Eumeces fasciatus). They were chilly enough to sit still and allow me to take some pictures. They were young, and still had their blue tails.

At the same outcrop where earlier this spring we had found a number of Black Rat Snakes, we found a ten inch long Northern Banded Watersnake (Nerodia sipedon). Like others we have found in this area, they tend to be more brown in color than the gray ones we usually see.

That's it. An hour plus drive each way and about three hours on the bluff for a water snake and two skinks. That's how it goes though, and it was still nice to get out. Maybe we were a little too early, maybe we will try again in the next couple of weeks.