A new lifer!

Although it had cooled down a bit and was somewhat overcast a friend Chris and I headed out to Rockwood Conservation Area to look for snakes. Our first few minutes of searching were unsuccessful, but be continued despite. Eventually under a large wooden board we found two brown snakes and a small garter. 

Adult (F?) Dekay's brown snake

 Despite the colder weather these snakes were a bit more active than expected and getting pictures took a few minutes.

Escaping

This glimmer of hope lead us to find three more brown snakes. Two of these were about the length of my finger and half the width of a pencil.

Tiny Dekay's brown snake

 Pussy willows were out and flowering.

Pussy willow flower

 Many centipedes and millipedes were found under logs, rocks and boards

Centipede

Further down the trail we flipped a rock and found a small red-backed salamander

Red-backed salamander

 After our adventures at Rockwood Conservation Area we headed to our spot near Guelph to meet up with some other friends and look for salamanders. There were a lot of ground beetles crawling around. This one in particular was very large and coo. It was not bothered much by being handled and didn't bite at all.

Carabus serratus

Searching one of the shallow vernal pools we didn't find any four-toed salamanders this time. The main pool where we always find things did have six species around it: green frog, spring peeper, blue spotted, spotted, jeffersons and eastern newt.

We found our first blue spotted salamander out of the water along the path in leaf litter.

Blue-spotted salamander

 This male spotted salamander was found near the back of the pool with some other spotted. He had so many bright spots. More than I have usually seen on one of these guys.

Spotted salamander

 This eastern newt eft was seen eating spotted salamander eggs in the pool. I actually waded out in bare feet to get a picture of this happening. This is about the best my camera could get but it was a really cool thing to watch although a bit sad.

Newt getting its fill of  spotted salamander egg masses

 Spotted salamanders lay eggs in large fist sized clumps whereas blue spotted salamander lay eggs in smaller clumps of about 20. We saw a lot of both spotted and blue spotted eggs in the vernal pools already so we might have missed the large portion of migration.

Spotted salamander egg masses

 And then.... as Josh, Dav and I are knee deep in muck.... Chris found the treasure of the night. This Jefferson's salamander was on land nearby the pool. The long limbs and grey colour are indication of a pure Jefferson's salamander however hybrids of blue spotted and Jefferson's are more common than the pure species. This species is endangered in Canada and is a new lifer for me. I have never been able to confirm seeing one but the slatey grey spots on this guy are very noticeably different than the bluish grey of the blue spotted above.

As a lifer, naturally there are a billion pictures. Here are a few of them.

Long limbs, tail and neck

Slatey grey coloured body with lighter grey spots

Jefferson's salamander (Ambystoma jeffersonianum)