10-05-16

Trip Details

Location: Delaware and Alamakee counties, Iowa

Weather: 75 degrees, partly cloudy

Time: 2:00 p.m.

Herpers: Don Becker, Barry Rickards and Jim Scharosch

Account by: Jim Scharosch

Photos by: Jim Scharosch

Don had received some reports of timber rattlesnake locations in Alamakee county that we wanted to check out. The weather looked really good so this was the day to take a shot at it.

On the way up we saw some roadside rocks in Delaware county. We decided to stop and check them out, and saw a garter snake on the crawl right away. That was a good sign that this area was an overwintering spot.

We flipped some rocks, and soon found a Fox Snake (Pantherophis vulpinus) under a large rock along with a couple of garter snakes.

A little ways up the road we flipped a double on Milksnakes (Lampropeltis triangulum)

The two snakes were very similar, with brick red saddles and reduced black outlines. One was in shed though and the colors were obscured.

We headed up to Alamakee county and picked up Barry. We hiked in a long distance to a remote hillside where the timbers had been reported.

It looked like good timber habitat, and we located what were obvious rookery locations.

This one had a large timber shed in the rocks.

But even with good weather and obvious sign of timber presence, we didn't find any. Sometimes that's how it goes. We also didn't see anything that looked like an obvious den site.

We hiked up another huge hillside and didn't see any timbers there either. Here are some mushrooms, since I didn't have anything else to shoot.

You gotta scout new locations to have places to go, so even though we struck out, we learned a few things. We will be back to try again sometime.