4-23-18

Trip Details

Location: Southeastern Iowa

Weather: 68 degrees, breezy

Time: 1:00 p.m. 

Herpers: Josh Otten and Jim Scharosch

Account by: Jim Scharosch

Photos by: Jim Scharosch exept where noted

I promise that every post on herpjournal this year will not be from the same site, but here is another post from this SE Iowa sauga site. Josh and I hit the site up today and we had another good day. We found garters again, but I'm not posting them this time. We weren't more than five minutes in when we found our first Massasauga (Sistrurus catenatus).

Photo by Josh Otten

It was another adult, hanging out near a crayfish burrow. Thus far all that we had seen were basically within a foot or so of a crayfish burrow entrance.

Our next snake was the same juvenile we had seen the day before, in the same exact crayfish burrow.

I even managed to get a pic of the ever elusive Josh...

Our third sauga was under a cover object that we had placed less than a week prior. It was the first sauga of the year at this site that had ventured away from it's crayfish burrow.

We found "only" three saugas today. It's pretty hilarious that we could almost be disappointed in that number, but that shows how high expectations are. We have been very fortunate to get to go to this site.