Herping in February!?

Black skimmers (black backs; background) and Laughing gulls

While recently attending the annual meeting of the Texas Chapter of the Wildlife Society, where several of our group gave presentations about our research, we managed to do some fortuitous herping. I say "fortuitous" because even though we were near the Texas coast (Beaumont, Anahuac, etc.) it wasn't that warm. It is still February after all. A lot of herps are still hibernating. We were driving around places to do birdwatching, but we happened to see a few herps too.

From the Texas panhandle to the gulf coast is about an 11-hour drive. Rather than driving the long distance in one shot, we decided to overnight at a wildlife management area (WMA), near my hometown (see "Hometown Herpin'" post below for habitat description), that we've visited before. Since my last trip there, we now have 2 students doing research there, with a third to start soon. While we were there, temperatures were getting into the 70's during the day, but it was cooling off considerably at night, making less-than-ideal conditions for herps. Spring peepers (a very small frog) were already "peeping" though. Their call resembles the peep of a baby chicken. We found a shallow area where we could get close to their calls without flooding our boots, and by focusing on one call, creeping closer, and then remaining motionless when the call stopped, my advisor caught one and I caught another.

Spring peeper

There were also northern cricket frogs by a small creek, just behind the bunkhouse we were staying in. Although a common species, we were lucky to find the cricket frogs because they weren't calling.

Northern cricket frogs

We saw a few other herps at Gus Engeling WMA, including American alligator, eastern river cooter, American bullfrog, and red-eared sliders (turtles). We also heard gray treefrogs, green treefrogs, and southern leopard frogs calling.

After out lay-over, we continued the drive south to Beaumont for the meeting, and visited some wildlife viewing areas in our spare time.

We stopped ata city park in Beaumont for birdwatching and some incidental rock flipping and walking around found a ground skink, 2 brown snakes, a Texas ratsnake, a green treefrog, and an introduced species, the Mediterranean gecko.

Ground skink

Brown snake

One place we visited yielded more than we might have guessed. We birded at Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge until sunset and on the drive back, we found 3 more herp species: Mississippi green water snake, Graham's crayfish snake, and squirrel treefrog. All 3 of them were "lifers" for me (species that I had never seen in the wild before) and all of them came in the span of about 20 minutes. I don't think I've ever found so many new species in such a short amount of time. I'm sorry that the pictures of the lifers are so bad. These were taken at night in virtual darkness, so I really didn't know if I was focused or not. On the brightside (no pun intended), at least you can tell what they are.

Mississippi green water snake

Graham's crayfish snake

Squirrel treefrog

Around the coast we also saw an eastern mud turtle, more red-eared sliders, and plenty of alligators. The meeting went well, we found some cool birds, and I saw 3 new herps...all in winter! If I'm having this much luck now, then I can't wait for spring!

Green treefrog (left) and Squirrel treefrog