Herping the Siouxland

Snakes of the
Minnesota Valley

                                   (Kasota Prairie 1995)
 
 
  Since I was 10 years old I’ve had a burning desire to pick up and examine all sorts of squirming creatures. I was lucky enough to have been raised up on a farm just a few miles west of The Blue Mound in SW Minnesota and about 15 miles south of The Pipestone National Monument. (Both of these places had a tremendous amount of early childhood influence on me.) Rock County is famous for its Sioux Quartzite outcropping. I encountered my first Fox Snake in 1968 on my Uncle Elmer’s farm near Jasper. And despite the fact that the poor thing had just gone through a baling machine and was badly mangled…I was still fascinated. Since then I’ve been bringing home all manner of strange creatures.    

 After graduating from Luverne High School in 1976 I traded Quartzite for Dolomite when I moved to Mankato. After 20 years of Prairie Grass and Corn…the vast wooded areas of the Minnesota River Valley and it’s Limestone Formations  seemed like a tropical rain forest and it has been my beloved new home ever since. Its here I began my slightly extended (and dubious) career as a college student. (See the other half of the homepage for those details) In June of 1995 I started field research for the Minnesota DNR. (See the other details on how I managed to get THAT job) In ‘95 and ‘96 I went back out to SW Minn. to monitor some newly discovered isolated colonies of Blandings Turtles. From 1997 to 1999 I was part of the county biological survey of the Minnesota River Valley. Spent the next 2 years pounding nails and building instruments. In 2002 I started working for South Dakota conducting field surveys for Reptiles and Amphibians of the eastern counties. Since 2000, South Dakota has begun to map out its wildlife and I signed up for the Wildlife Diversity Program Small Grants Program. During the last 2 years (2006-2007) I worked, once again, for the  Minnesota County Biological Survey.  From April to October I drive around (and live in) my 1990 Chevy Lumina mini-van. (I took out the seats and made a nice little traveling field lab and apartment on wheels.)        

Latest News:                                                                              This is where I'll be posting the latest sightings, findings, historical notes and weird rumors.                               
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April/May/June  2009:
 The search continues for Blandings Turtles!
(A state threatened species) We are still looking for reports and sightings of these rare and reclusive Turtles in the SW and south central counties of Minnesota. If you find a Turtle with a bright yellow chin and throat and it looks like its Smiling at you...PLEASE: Leave it Alone and DON'T bring it home as a "Pet" !!!
If you can...take a good close-up photo, let it go on it's way and contact me.                   
Actually...If at all possible...try to take as many detailed photos as you can. (Especially of the chin, throat and belly) The belly pattern on each Turtle is different (kind of like a finger-print) and we use these to identify each individual one. 

Part of the Blandings Turtle project involves radio telemetry. In 2003 several dozen Turtles were captured and fitted with small tracking devices.

Last April I had the opportunity to track down the last half dozen radioed Turtles and remove the transmitters, as the devices were quickly coming to the end of their battery life. Each radio emits a beep on a certain frequency, and as you turn the antenna towards the radioed Turtle, the receiver picks up the signal and the beep gets louder and louder the closer you get. Here you can see one of the small devices attached to a Blandings Turtle. They are glued on with a rubber epoxy and eventually fall off if the battery wears out and the signal goes dead.  
I only got in on the 'tail end' of this project. Several other field researchers did the long hard work of trapping, attaching the radios and tracking them thru the creeks, wetlands and rolling grasslands where they live. We found a lot of really cool and surprising information on the life habits and wanderings of these ancient Turtles. The data is still being entered into the state natural heritage data-base and more info will be available as soon as we know more.
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May 2009
Here's the latest up-date on Bullsnakes in the
     Minnesota River Valley:

Springtime and love is in the air! Also puts a new twist to that old Beatles tune: "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?"
  On Sunday, May 3rd, while on our way up to the Powderhorn Park May Day Parade, Deb and I took a back road and found a big Bullsnake crossing a road on the edge of the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge.
    
      
         
         After a few minutes we saw another smaller one
                   crossing at the exact same spot.
  Now we have two of them. At first I thought the smaller one
    was a female too, until I brought them closer together.
                   
      
              
              After a few minutes things began to get frisky...
             
...and as soon as I put them back down onto the side of the
        road... realized we had a breeding frenzy going on.

The smaller male immediately grabbed the big gal behind
                 the neck and then the real fun began!  
 

 
They proceeded to go at it 3 different times until I finally got
           them across the road and into the ditch.

      The female shot off into the weeds with the
      amorous gentleman in hot pursuit!
    

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(Old news from last year)
Up-Dates on the 2009 season coming soon. 
 May/June 2008
 In the Spring of 2006, I returned to scanning the wetlands of SW Minnesota for Amphibians. (After spending the previous 4 Spring seasons in Eastern South Dakota.) "Scanning" means driving around from sundown till 2 or 3 in the morning listening for the mating calls of Frogs and Toads. It was great fun until it got really expensive. Fortunately, I just finished up the latest contract with the DNR just at about the time when gas prices hit $ crazy! Lately I've been doing a lot of field research from the seat of my bicycle.
Anyway...There is a list of "target species" that we concentrate on looking for. These are the ones that are classified as somewhere between "not quite so common" to "critically endangered". For example: Garter Snakes, Painted Turtles, and Leopard Frogs are still fairly abundant so I don't stop and take a photo of every single one of those I find. (I do however, keep track in my journal, of every single Reptile and Amphibian and other critters that I encounter)
The Blandings Turtle, of course, is on this list. And there are several other kinds of Amphibians that we are monitoring including these two:
the Gray Tree Frog  and the Great Plains Toad

Tree Frogs are small, about an inch and a half long and can change color from gray to green to match their surroundings. They are extremely difficult to see although their call can be heard from quite a distance, and kind of sounds like a short loud metallic "belch". They live in groves of trees for most of the year and during the breeding season, travel (sometimes great distances) to pools of standing water. Breeding season lasts from early May through June. Although Tree Frogs will occasionally call 'just for fun' all the way thru summer on warm muggy nights. 
Tree Frogs seem to absent from the six SW Minn. counties. They are abundant in Watonwan, Brown and Martin counties wherever there are trees and standing water. I have been gathering evidence since 2006 that Tree Frogs may be expanding their range farther west. They seem to be colonizing the corridors along the 3 branches of the Watonwan River and Elm Creek. This past spring I heard them calling in several places 2-3 miles farther west than last year and the year before. They seem to go only so far, then go silent even tho there is favorable habitat farther to the west. (This is a long term project and it is way too soon to announce these findings officially.) This has become my own pet project and I am already looking forward to

next year so I can "pick up the trail" once again. I absolutely Love these weird little things! It's just about the closest you can get to actually meeting a little buggy-eyed space alien!  
 This past June, after those heavy rains we had, I heard more Tree Frogs than ever before, calling from nearly Every damp portion of the landscape!!! (Flooded fields, backwater areas along creeks and even road-side ditches!) Needless to say...Spring 2008 was Great for Amphibians!  

And those heavy June rains produced another big surprise: On the evening of June 7...Great Plains Toads (Bufo cognatus) were heard calling in Watonwan county!!! The very first time this species has ever been documented this far East!
Plains Toads are a little different than our more common American Toad: They have big dark circular blotches on their back. (Common Toads are a lot more speckled) And while American Toads have a nice sweet sounding "tinkly" kind of trill that lasts from 5-20 seconds at a time...the Plains Toads emit an ear-shattering metallic jack-hammer like trill that lasts from 20 seconds to a minute long. (The sound can be truly deafening at close range!!!)

Plains Toads are fairly common in the western states and, in the past, have been documented in every SW county in Minnesota. However...During the last 2 years (2006 and 2007) the Minnesota County Biological Survey failed to find any of them in the areas where they were previously documented. The conditions have to be just right for these Toads to call and reproduce: Intense heavy downpours and temporary standing pools of water. ('06 and '07 were Not good years for this) So it was a huge (and pleasant) surprise when the flooded fields of my own immediate neighborhood produced not only favorable conditions...but the Toads that went with it! I have been scanning this area since 1997 and have Never heard a Plains Toad around here.      

Now all of a sudden within a space of one week I found at least 18 different locations where Plains Toads were heard calling! Where they have been hiding all this time and how they can survive so many long years without reproducing is still a mystery. And to add to the puzzle: almost every single one of those flooded fields completely dried up in just 2 weeks or so. Not barely enough time for the eggs to hatch, the tadpoles to 'morph' and for the baby toads to leave the water. (The tiling and drainage of the cropland is proving most effective as our society favors Corn over Toads)
Still...It would seem that a considerable number of Great Plains Toads have beaten the odds and are still here among us. One thing's for sure: I'm gonna be hittin the brakes and stopping to closely look at Every single tiny Toad that crosses my path from now on. You just don't know when the next totally unexpected surprising thing will pop up next!    

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 July/August:
 Baby Tree Frogs are out of the ponds! They've lost their gills and tails, have grown their little legs and are now hopping about and swinging thru the upper canopy of prairie plants and grasses like little Monkeys in the jungle! Found these at sundown on July 31st.
     
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September:
September was, once again, Salamander month!
The cool Autumn rains bring the Salamanders out and this year I am happy to announce I saw a Lot more than last year!
I didn't get much of a chance to scan as much of Watonwan county as previous years but instead concentrated around an area of ponds and wetlands SE of Madelia.
There was one particular stretch of gravel road where up to 3 at a time could be seen out walking around! Usually only one or two were visible at a time...and I made it a point to stop and look at each and every one. There seems to be Huge portions of the landscape where they are simply not seen anymore...but in certain areas where conditions are favorable...they are still fairly abundant. And BIG, too! This year I found 2 of the biggest and most beautifully colored Tiger Salamanders I've ever seen!!!
And some of them even behave and pose nicely for the camera. How can anyone resist a face like this?  
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Another quite unexpected surprise during this month was the fact that I finally found a Redbelly Snake in Watonwan county. I knew they were in the area along the Watonwan River because several locals accurately described seeing them. The big surprise was...I only found one!

During late afternoon, on warm sunny days, these things are actually quite common all over southern Minnesota but for some reason they are few and far between around here.

Well...Nice to find a and photograph one anyway. Believe it or not...this is the very first Redbelly Snake EVER officially documented in this county! Yes, its still quite possible to make valuable scientific discoveries almost right in your own back yard. When you concentrate on looking for the weird, small stuff its actually pretty easy!  
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October and "Indian Summer"

Believe it or not...The last warm sunny days of the year in this part of the state is when I find the Most number of Snakes! Unfortunately...Many of them are dead on the roads due to what's known as the Fall Migration. As soon as the night time temps begin to dip down into the 40's (and especially after the first frost) Snakes begin leaving their lowland summertime hunting grounds and head to higher elevations to hibernate underground. Most of the roads in the Minnesota Valley are situated between these two and every year I go out and check the "death toll".
One of the worst roads in the area for this annual massacre is the Judson Bottom Road from Mankato to Courtland. In the photos above and below you can see 10 little Brown Snakes that fell victim to the traffic. (And these were only the ones I collected. There were a lot more than this) I was able to only save 3 small ones and help them across the road. It feels good to be able to help out. Unfortunately they will attempt to cross the road again in the Spring to get back to the marshy areas along the river! 


And finally...After 3 long years of searching...I found an Eastern Milksnake along this same stretch of road. 

 
Unfortunately this one too, was the victim of the road. These rarely seen snakes are probably fairly common wherever likely habitat still exists. However, they are seldom seen! They are nearly identical in appearance to Fox Snakes but are slightly smaller and have reddish brown blotches.
They also have reddish brown eyes, too...sometimes its the only distinguishing feature of these cryptic, dull colored snakes that spend most of the time underground or just under the leaf litter. Apparently they are nocturnal during the warm summer months and about the only time you'll ever see one is late in the Fall when they are traveling to reach hibernation dens.
I used to see, on average, about one or two of these each year. The last one I saw was a newly hatched baby near Courtland. That was in October 2005 and it was also a dead one on the road.
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On a happier note: I did find a LIVE hatchling Fox Snake on the Bottom Road and this one had just eaten a Huge meal!!!

This was the smallest wild Fox Snake I'd ever seen. (Obviously the runt of the litter) Its unusual to see these snakes with a meal in its belly so late in the year, as they usually need several warm days to digest.

This one got lucky, as 2 big tractors were coming, and it was so Fat it could hardly get across the road in time. I helped this one across and hope it made it thru the long cold nights OK. 
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And, on what might possibly have been the Last nice day of 2008, I found some more Redbelly Snakes and some tiny baby Garter Snakes on the gravel roads near New Ulm.
 




Well...That's about it for this year. I suppose its always possible that something unusual might pop up yet but its getting late. We DID actually hear 3 Chorus Frogs sleepily calling from the edge of a drying wetland on Oct. 11. Its almost as if they were bidding each other "Good Night and we'll see ya again next year!" 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- November 3rd
The last Snake of the season. Temps hit 65 degrees and that was it. Started going down for the rest of the week until Winter pretty much started by the weekend. 

 
And...May I introduce my lovely assistant
(And Wife! :) Deb Nelson.
She bravely holds certain critters for photo sessions and is good luck to have along in the field, as she has, on several occasions, pointed out crawly things that I sometimes miss.

 
The last one: A Plains Garter snake.
(Looking forward to Spring already!)