Backdate: 06/18/2005
As I mentioned in a previous post, my wife, the lovely Angela, and our kids spent the week with her parents camping in the lovely Hocking Hills area. There were lots of herps to be found, much to the delight of Eleanor. Actually, as I was taking this picture, Angie had just told her what sight we were going to see next. This is Ella’s patronizing “Oh really? You guys are the best parents ever!” face. She did actually seem to enjoy the hiking– carried a walking stick and everything– as long as it wasn’t too much at once.
Everyone was quite taken with the beauty of the area. The falls at Old Man’s (not a real cave, but an immense rock overhang) Cave, as well as Cedar (not real cedars, but hemlocks) Falls– pictured below– were pretty neat, but the real gem of the area was Conkle’s Hollow.
It is hard for me to give a description that does Conkle’s Hollow justice. Suffice it to say that it is a narrow wooded gorge between breath-taking sandstone bluffs, themselves draped with lush (and sometimes rare or endangered) vegetation. A quiet brook trickles through it all. The afternoon we visited was so humid that there was almost a light mist hanging in the hollow. The trees filtered out just the right amount of light, giving the place a sort of enchanted glow. Angie remarked that she half expected to see fairies. Of course we did not. We did see one herp here. A salamander, Southern Two-lined, to be precise. 
Again, the pic above is Cedar Falls, not Conkle’s Hollow. We forgot our camera on that hike.
Back to the herps. The first day we arrived, I noticed an old chapel and cemetary right across the road from the campground. It was next to a woods, and both the building and the graveyard were run down and a bit overgrown. Looked like good herping. After I helped Dad get the campsite set up, I took the kids over to see if we could find any thing. Our first trip yeilded little, despite a good number of slate shingles, wood siding pieces, and other debris scattered over the area. The only thing we found was a shed snakeskin behind the chapel. From the size and habitat, I figured black rat-snake. Since there was nothing else to see, we went about our normal camping activities.
The next morning, I woke up before anyone else, and decided to head back to the churchyard to see what I could see. Under one of the boards behind the church was a snake I had never seen before and had not really expected to find– especially as the first one of the trip. I recognized it right away. The light collar on the otherwise slate gray snake is a dead giveaway. Northern Ring-necked Snake/Diadophis punctatus edwardsii. 
From above this looks like a rather mundane serpent. No big deal. But when I picked it up I was surprised by the brightness of the belly. All ringneck snakes have vividly colored ventrums–some even use them in a defensive display, but northerns are supposed to be the least colorful of this species. I was expecting a dull yellow to match the ring on the neck. Most of the ringnecks I found were bright orange below, as seen here.
I ended up finding a total of four or five of these snakes (a couple could have been repeats, its kind of hard to tell) throughout the week. At least one appeared to be gravid; I thought I could make out the distinct shape of eggs through her belly. It was so tempting to keep her and see if i could get any eggs she might lay to hatch. Keeping her til the end of the week, then returning her after egg-laying would have been difficult, however; as would have been caring for the young. It really would not have worked.
About mid-week, I was taking the boys out to poke around in the state forest. About one hundred yards from the campsite, we came across an good sized turtle crossing the road. It was a brightly colored Eastern Box Turtle/Terrapene carolina. We turned right around to show everyone back at camp. Turtles do not seem to be nearly as upsetting to some people as other herps can be. We got this photo on the little grass carpet in front of the trailer. Note the bright scales on the sides of the head and on the front legs. I was quite pleased.
There were several other herps we saw, many were not photographed because either did not have a camera with us at the time, or did not a good opportunity to photograph them. These included northern water snakes, milk snakes (see previous post), snapping turtles, green frogs, bullfrogs, toads (did not check to see if it was a Fowler’s) and salamanders.
It is due to this trip that I now have a heightened interest in salamanders. There was one day when we found over 20 of three, maybe four different species. We were hiking through a portion of state woods where we found the first one, a Red-backed Salamander, under a rotted log. The proportions of its body and the way it moved, kind of reminded me of Randall in Monster’s Inc. It was really agile and energetic. Not like the lumbering tiger salamanders I used to see as a kid.
A little later, in the bed of a forested stream (which was now little more than a trickle between puddle sized pools), we hit the mother-lode. Every 2nd or 3rd rock was home to what I have come to believe were Northern Dusky Salamanders, although I could not ID them at the time. I thought maybe they were Jefferson’s, but the streambed habitat has since changed my mind. We probably saw a dozen of these. Some of the rocks on the margin of the streamside also held Southern Two-lined salamanders. Without my field guide I again made an incorrect inital ID, thinking they were immature red-backed salamanders.
What may have been the fourth species were the myriad larvae that scattered when I lifted rocks that were in water of a few inches depth. I couldn’t catch them, which did not matter because I would not have been able to ID them if I had. I have, however, heard that Red Salamander larva can be found in the hillside streams in Hocking County during June. I’m hanging my hat on that.
OK, so that might not be as many herps as you would expect from a place I have dubbed “herp heaven”, but it was the best week of finding reptiles and amphibians I have ever had. So keep your complaints and criticisms to yourself!