oops, Kansas herping event of 4/15/06

not to be confused with my herping event of 4/23/06. LOL ! Got out earlier and the highs of low to middle 80ties. Same area of the Flint Hills proper but with very low event of the burn off season of prairie grasses due to mighty winds consistent. Less time spent out but more productive than this weeks herping. Of the big 3 snakes of that area and again by order :

13 emoryi
11 milks
8 speckled kings

Others :

113 approximate ringnecks
15 yellow belly racers
6 garters
4 earth type snakes >dekay snake, lined snake, etc.

Lizards :

about 30-40 collareds
28 great plains skinks ALL with perfect non-broken tails
7 various smaller species of skinks

Amphibians :
4 plains narrowmouth toad
1 tiger sally under a very moist rock ( not unusual )

You mind if I ask what areas you hit? I never find that many critters in a day. I herp the hills around alma and wabansee lake and all the way up to manhattan. Are you guys crossing the barb wire fences at all? i could go for a good milksnake and speckled king day. I drive th edirt roads and look for rock ledges and good flipping stones. Ill be back out this weekend if the weather is good. I may go east though, maybe. Just curious. Later

wow, that's some pretty decent numbers. I think I may move out there.

Yes Sppeavy

you gotta cross those fences. Try to find a house/ranch or someone to ask. A lot of private lands out there is owned by non locals/out of towner's/not there but you have to try to ask even if the people door you knock on doesn't own the property. Ask them if they think the absence owners would care. Unless it is a very tight fence never go through it or climb it but go under. Relate this to the people that you are asking. Tell them exactly what you are doing and why. It helps sometime when ya got a young kid along. I don't know why, LOL ! I HAVE been turned down before and I still thanked them for their time. But of the last 2 weekends not one person said no.

I always get on the back roads except for a few places off of 4 and 177. Even though I'm on 99, I don't even think about trying to hunt the sides of 99 anymore. Remember to hunt west and southern exposed hills mostly with variations of southwest and southeast exposers. Some of the hill tops can be good only if the day before and that day is going to be cooler than the middle 80ties. Why, the heat on those hill tops because of the longevity of the sun beating down time wise becomes unbearable to herps where the other directional compass points, the sun moves more quickly across. On the other hand, the north sides of hills are always cooler and your nocturnal and crespuscular species don't inhabit this directional point as much because it maintains cooler for their heat purposes > thermo-regulation.

sppeavy said:

You mind if I ask what areas you hit? I never find that many critters in a day. I herp the hills around alma and wabansee lake and all the way up to manhattan. Are you guys crossing the barb wire fences at all? i could go for a good milksnake and speckled king day. I drive th edirt roads and look for rock ledges and good flipping stones. Ill be back out this weekend if the weather is good. I may go east though, maybe. Just curious. Later

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That's cool that they let you go on their land over there. Here in Ca, it is getting hard to herp private property. Even when the land owners are okay, with the concept of field herping, they still won't let you on their land, because there is so much worry about liability, and they also don't want other people thinking it's okay to be on the property.
BTW, where are the photos, of some of your finds?