5-13-14

Trip Details

Location: Eastern Kansas

Weather: Cloudy, north winds at 15 mph. Temps in the mid-fifties.

Time: 5:00 PM

Herpers: Chad Whitney, Jeff LeClere, Jim Scharosch

Account by: Jim Scharosch

Photos by: Jim Scharosch

It was overcast and cool again, a continuation of the crappy weather from the day before. We started off at a tin site in eastern Kansas. It was an amazing site and it was obvious that it isn't well known among the herpers in the area. If the weather had been more cooperative I'm sure this site would have been amazing…

We turned a bunch of tins before we found our first snake, a Speckled Kingsnake (Lampropeltis getulus).

I got this shot of Jeff hamming it up. It was a small adult about twenty inches long and was in shed. Chad said it was the first speckled he had heard of from this site.

Next was a Black Ratsnake (Elaphe obsoleta) that I didn't mess with.

I just grabbed a quick shot as found. Chad found another large ratsnake, but it slipped down a burrow before I went over to get a photo.

Next Chad found a Prairie Kingsnake (Lampropeltis calligaster).

It was about two feet long.

This is a picture of Jeff taking a picture of Chad taking a picture of the kingsnake.

That wrapped it up for this spot.

We had found really small numbers of animals this trip, but we had seen pretty much all of the species that are normally found on a trip to this area. The only thing we were missing out to complete our list was a great plains ratsnake. To rectify this we headed south to some cuts that always produce them in decent numbers. As was the theme with this trip, we turned a lot of rocks to find one small, in shed, Great Plains Ratsnake (Elaphe emoryi).

We stopped at a board site on the way back to Kansas City. I found a racer on the crawl but didn't take any photos. We also caught a skink, hoping it would be a broad-headed skink, but upon a closer look it turned out to be a large Five-lined Skink (Eumeces fasciatus).

Of course, as soon as we finished up, the clouds started to break and the weather warmed up a little bit. We would have kept going but Jeff and I had to be back to Kansas City for a Primus and Queens of the Stone Age show that night.

I'm not going to make another page, but on the way back home Jeff and I stopped at a couple of sites in northwestern Missouri and Iowa. We continued the theme of the trip. We turned some great cover objects and found nothing. At least we located a couple of nice junk sites.

I'd like to thank Chad and Michal for giving us a place to stay and for herping with us. Also thanks to Courtney for heading out with us on Saturday. If trips like this were just about seeing a lot of herps, then this trip might have counted as a miss, but since these trips are about the experience and hanging with friends, I count it as a hit. I always have a good time when I'm herping with Jeff and this trip was no exception.