Random tidbits on Knots and Science

The ban on horseshoe crab harvest in Delaware has been struck down by a judge. I guess a few fishermen are more important than the major food supply for our Atlantic Flyway shorebirds. In other news, Red Knot populations have plummeted 80% in recent years, from 100,000+ in the 80's to less than 20,000 now.



The Evolution vs. Intelligent Design people in the blogosphere have been very active recently:

'Irreducible Complexity' is reducible after all - Another purported example of Michael Behe's ridiculous concept falls prey to actual science. You should take this cartoon to heart, Behe: Science, it works...

Behe is out with a new book: The Edge of Evolution. I would love to dissect this book myself, but as I looked it over in Borders, I decided I don't want to support him with a single cent. I'll wait till I can get my hands on a free copy. Meanwhile, science bloggers are having a heyday skewering it.

The Discovery Institute has put out a new textbook to subvert the teaching of science: Exploring Evolution. It looks like a well put-together affair. It plays the evolution 'debate' like it is even-handed, but just from reading the online samples, I can tell how quietly and subtly it downplays and misrepresents the science of things. It really disgusts me how they market this to an audience of high school teachers and home-schoolers, who don't have the background to see through the bullshit.

Comments on William Dembski's ID blog attempt to skewer 'Darwinists' over the discovery of some function in 'junk DNA'. The arguments are so twisted and stretched to blame the Darwinists, it is hilarious. A science blogger responds.

More herping - We just can't stop!

Cornell Herpers with no classes to keep them occupied have proven yet again to be a formidable force. Five friends and I herped some local spots today, with four targets: Coal Skink (the only lizard in Upstate NY, rare and localized, would be new for almost all), Smooth Green Snake (an awesome snake that some of us (including me) had never seen), Wood Turtle (multiple females laying eggs on a friend's property, would be new for nearly all), and Four-toed Salamander (would be new for nearly all).

Paul, Shawn, Eric, Tina, Mike, and I set out at the break of dawn to get to the fields known to contain Coal Skinks before they warmed up. We wanted to catch them hiding in brush piles or basking before they could warm up enough to move out and forage, where only random chance could find them. Less than 10 minutes out of the van, Eric lets out a cry - "Green Snake!!" One target reached very fast! The snake was very obliging:


Shawn seems just a little too excited about his first green snake:

The next 2 hours were spent combing these upland fields for more finds. We found a large number of Common Garters, as well as good numbers of Redbelly Snakes. Here are a few, some of whom had more pink than red bellies:


We also had a very nicely colored Ring-neck Snake:


Finally, in one of the small fields, one of the last options we had left, I located a bark pile and started to dig through. Out came my first Coal Skink!


This specimen was a juvenile, as was the second one we found, while trying to remember the combination to the gate at the back end of the property (we ended up having to drive back to the front!):


We had some time to kill before heading over to our friend Sarah's house to look for the Wood Turtles, so we popped on over to our local Black Rat Snake spot. We quickly located one roosting in the rafters, as well as several large skins:


The Wood Turtles ended up being a bust. We missed the laying females by several days, and failed to locate them with an hour of searching the woods and marshes nearby. However, Sarah will keep close tabs on the known nests, so we may yet get to see baby Wood Turtles running around! Our final spot of the day, a local bog where we hoped to find the sphagnum-loving Four-toed Salamander, was also a bust today. We did find a Painted Turtle on the trail:


We were all still happy with our mornings' finds though, and missing some things means we'll just have to get out there again soon...

Finally, as a small add-on, here are a few other pics from the day:

A Ctenucha moth

A really cool crane fly. When it flew, it held its bold black-and-white legs out stiff, and flew slowly. It was very strange. I have some poor video of the flight I will try to add later, and I will see if I can get an ID on it.


A large shelf fungus


A note on snake photography technique (applies to all small herps). Eric demonstrates the method he taught us: cup your hands over the critter for a minute, until you feel it settle down. Then release and snap the picture while it's still curled up, before it runs again. It works really well and allows for more natural shots than those restrained by hands.


Trip Totals

Ambystoma maculatum (Spotted Salamander) - 1

Notophthalmus viridescens (Red-spotted Newt) - 26
Plethodon cinereus (Redback Salamander) - 33

Bufo americanus (American Toad) - x
Hyla versicolor (Gray Treefrog) - 1
Pseudacris crucifer (Spring Peeper) - 2
Rana clamitans (Green Frog) - x
Rana catesbeiana (Bull Frog) - x
Rana pipiens (N. Leopard Frog) - x
Rana palustris (Pickeral Frog) - 4

Chrysemys picta (Painted Turtle) - 16

Eumeces anthracinus (Coal Skink) - 2

Storeria dekayi (Dekay's Brown Snake) - 8
Storeria occipitomaculata (Redbelly Snake) - 15
Thamnophis sirtalis (Common Garter Snake) - 35
Diadophis punctatus (Ringneck Snake) - 1
Opheodrys vernalis (Smooth Green Snake) - 2
Elaphe obsoleta (Black Rat Snake) - 1

A Big Year for Macaulay Library

My part-time job of the past two years has archiving bird footage for Macaulay Library's video collection. Macaulay is a storehouse of bird behavior and sounds captured on audio and video. Sound recording has been with the Lab since its founding, and more recently the video collection has seen major expansions. The Library is now in the midst of a Big Year, a massive drive to fill in the gaps in the Library's collections of North American birds. Already this year there have been recording and filming trips to Florida and South Texas. Currently the recordists from the library are up in Alaska. There are also trips to the boreal northeast in the works. Here are a few links to peruse:

Gerritt Vyn's blog from Alaska. Gerritt has been posting regularly with beautiful pictures from Nome and Barrow.

Mike Andersen's photos. To complement Gerritt's blog.

The recordists.

Peruse the Big Year website for sound and video samples, and also check out Animal Behavior Archive, Macaulay's web archive for its video and sound collection.

More Allegany Ramblings

I'm still recovering from last weekend's amazing trip, even as I get together some local trips for this weekend. Stay tuned for some potentially very cool findings. For now, here's some wrap-up of odds and ends that didn't get mentioned the first time around:

First, here's a collection of Allegany Nature Pilgrimage posts from Mon@rch (a park naturalist at Allegany).

Second, here's a cool artifact from our expedition. Some snake skins. Guess the species?


If you guessed Short-headed Garter Snake (Thamnophis brachystoma) you were right! Did you count scales? Yeah, I know its hard from a picture.

Third and finally, the birds! Shawn and I did as much birding on the side as we could manage while flipping rocks like crazy, although it was mostly listening. We managed a total of 91 species for the weekend, with some of the following highlights:

COMMON RAVEN - heard one once from our Red House tent site, in the morning. I was a little disappointed about not seeing more. Allegany used to be one of the few sites in WNY where I could get Raven. Now that I'm in Ithaca, I see them fairly often (they are increasing in numbers in the region).

OLIVE-SIDED FLYCATCHER - 1 on the Red House Maintenance Rd, 1 on Wolf Run Rd. Both migrants, as the closest this species breeds to Allegany is the Adirondacks. This is my first time seeing this species in the US! It's not quite a lifer, as I saw one last fall in Mexico. I got to observe the Wolf Run bird foraging fairly close while eating lunch.

ACADIAN FLYCATCHER - 1 at Camp Allegany, 1 on Bear Springs Trail. My favorite NY Empidonax.

PRAIRIE WARBLER - 3 males on territory on Wolf Run Rd. We got to watch two of those males repeatedly chase each other close to our car as we ate lunch. Also, while moving through the field looking for Shortheads, I happened to turn around and see one of the males singing and foraging not 15 feet away. I got my life Prairie Warbler in Ithaca just a few weeks ago, now I'm getting better looks than I have of many more common warblers...

YELLOW-THROATED WARBLER - 2 singing at the entrance to the Red House Lake
Maintenance Rd. Only spot for this species in WNY that I know of.

BLACKBURNIAN WARBLER - counted a total of 42 at spots we kept track of, there were certainly many more than that. They were EVERYWHERE. Literally every site we stopped at had Blackburnians. Even in the extensive fields of Wolf Run Rd. (in the Southwest corner of the park), there were Blackburnians in the tiny stand of trees in the middle, singing. They outnumbered vireos at some spots.

I think that about wraps up the Allegany ramblings (at least until our potential return later in the summer).

Allegany State Park Herping Trip

This weekend, a rogue band of Cornellian herpers took Allegany State Park by storm. Consisting of Shawn, Eric, Tina, and I, our group spent three days herping, coinciding with the Allegany Nature Pilgrimage (as my previous post indicated). I'll spare the suspense, and get straight to the results: a whopping 25 species of herp - an incredible weekend for New York! Even more so, when you consider we got almost all of our target species, and missed a few common ones like Gray Treefrog and any Turtles.

We started off headed west from Ithaca on 86 (the Southern Tier Expressway). Just west of Horseheads, we stopped a rest stop closed last summer due to the presence of basking Timber Rattlesnakes (Crotalus horridus). This summer, we found no Crotalus, but we did find an adult and a juvenile Milk Snake (Lampropeltis triangulum):

The Milk Snakes were plenty aggressive. Both exhibited fake tail-rattling behavior, where they vibrate their tails rapidly in loose material to mimic a Crotalus's rattle. Here is a short video:


While there were no Crotalus, there were plenty of rattler warning signs:

We paused for a group picture. I left the camera on 10-sec. delay and ran to get in, slipping and falling into the sign just before the picture (they're all laughing at me):

Onward from there to Allegany! Our first morning, we spent herping the local spots near the Nature Pilgrimage, before they were too overrun. Already spots had been worked over, and we found all but the remote corners of the park were worked over before we got there. There were just so many people. We did find many great herps just the same. Our early finds included many of the common salamanders:

Dusky Salamanders (Desmognathus sp.)
Two-lined Salamanders (Eurycea bislineata)
Slimy Salamander (Plethodon glutinosus)
Redback Salamander (Plethodon cinereus)
A favorite salamander of many of the group, the Spring Salamander (Gyrinophilus porphyriticus):
From the lowland creeks, we moved on to upland forest for one of our target species: Wehrle's Salamander (Plethodon wehrlei). It took a long while, but eventually we hit the sweet spot on the slope and uncovered our first two Wehrle's, a new species for all. From there, we ended up encountering 11 Wehrle's at that location and 6 more at a second upland location. We were able to get acquanted with the Wehrle's field marks and identification tips much better after seeing them in person, rather than the somewhat inadequate job the Peterson Herps guide does. I'll post some details on Wehrle's at a later date. Here's a few pictures:
With one new species under our belts, we took some time off from concentrated herping to wander around and enjoy the tranquil beauty of the Old Growth basin in Allegany. The entrance to the basin is some downhill clearings covered with many very tall fern stands, as Eric demonstrates:
In the forest:

That concluded our first day's herping. That night we hopped over to the Pilgrimage for the insect blacklighting. I neglected to bring my camera, and missed out on pictures of Polyphemus Moth, Promethea Moth, Luna Moth, and Big Poplar Sphinx moths. Some of them are pictured here in the daytime on Mon@rch's blog.

The next morning (Saturday), we made some brief stops near the Red House Lake Area Maintenance Rd. for the local singing Yellow-throated Warblers. We heard two males, getting brief glimpses of one. A surprise find was an Olive-sided Flycatcher, my first for the ABA area (I saw my life Olive-sided in Mexico last fall).

After that brief stop for birds, we continued on for our second target herp: Short-headed Garter Snake (Thamnophis brachystoma). This species' worldwide range is between Allegany State Park and Pittsburgh, PA. It is a bizarre distribution and we have been shooting around some hypotheses as to why. It is a field specialist, and I believe an earthworm specialist. None of us had seen one before, and given the descriptions in the Peterson Guide we thought we'd be reduced to scale counts on every Thamnophis we encountered just to tell. Not the case (although it is a necessary double-check)! I'll be posting more on Short-headed Garter later, as I will for Wehrle's Salamander. For now, check out these cute little snakes! It took several hours of searching in hot fields, but eventually we started finding them, and ended up with 7 total at two locations. Here's a few photos:


We also found several Redbelly Snakes (Storeria occipitomaculata) in the fields. This was a new species for me. We even found both color forms (brown and slate-gray):


Late in the afternoon, after finding a handful of snakes at the second location we found for Shortheads, we made a surprising discovery at an unexpected location. Underneath some junk piled behind a garage, we uncovered a Long-tailed Salamander! Eurycea longicauda has been something like the holy grail of herping for me, and we found one without even expecting it. It was even more gorgeous than the book depicts. This thing just glowed:

We had already been on a roll, and we knew we were beating most of the lists kept by the Nature Pilgrimage for herp sightings. The Long-tailed, however, inflated our status for herpers extraordinare to something like minor Gods (or maybe it was only our egos that were inflated?). We coasted on that high feeling all through the next day - a gloomy, rainy Sunday, during which we missed all of our remaining targets. We hit locations for Four-toed Salamander (Hemidactylium scutatum) and Smooth Green Snake (Opheodrys vernalis), both would have been new species for all in the group, but missed out on both. We took two friend's families with us to a Hellbender (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis) location so we could show their children what awesome beasts Hellbenders are. Well, the location our map lead us to was not what we were expecting, and the quality was suboptimal for Hellbenders. The only thing we caught was a Lamprey, which was pretty cool. It was probably a species of Brook Lamprey (I'll need to ID later when I can find my copy of the Peterson Fish Guide).

After our friends took off, wet, happy, but herp-less, we decided an incorrect location was not going to stop us, so we proceeded to scout every major stream in the region. Two hours later, we had not found one stream that seemed suitable for Hellbenders, they were all either too small or too large to effectively search. Our secret Hellbender spot has chosen to remain a secret... we'll refind it at some point...


All in all, it was the best herping trip I've ever been on. It was made all the better by visiting the Nature Pilgrimage at night and reconnecting with many friends from home I haven't seen in a long time. It was also great, as Mon@rch notes, to see the strong role kids have in the Pilgrimage. The morning we left, we stopped at the Pilgrimage to see a local 16-year old named Rex give a Herpetology talk and live animal presentation. We joked about 'putting him in his place' and 'seeing how much he really knows', but Rex did a great job talking about and showing almost all the native herp species to a full crowd under the tent. He is just as dedicated and knowledgeable as any of us, just a few years behind us in education. We exchanged some information, and of course gave Cornell a big plug for his upcoming college search. We always are in need of more bright, dedicated young folks.

Trip total: 25 Species

Salamanders

Ambystoma maculatum - 4

Notophthalmus viridescens - 31

Desmognathus fuscus - 89

Desmognathus ochrophaeus - 91

Eurycea bislineata - 6

Eurycea longicauda - 1

Gyrinophilus porphyriticus - 13

Plethodon cinereus - 113

Plethodon werhlei - 17

Plethodon glutinosus - 3

Frogs

Rana pipiens - 3

Rana palustris - 10

Rana catesbeiana - 1

Rana clamitans - x (didn't count numbers)

Rana sylvatica - 1

Pseudacris crucifer - 6

Pseudacris triseriata - 1

Bufo americanus - 17

Snakes

Nerodia sipedon - 2

Storeria dekayi - 4

Storeria occipitomaculata - 6

Thamnophis sirtalis - 7

Thamnophis brachystoma - 7

Diadophis punctatus - 5

Lampropeltis triangulum - 2