The next morning the sky was overcast and the temperature was in the low fifties, but at least it wasn't raining.  We were heading east towards the other side of the state, to work a set of railroad tracks.  The day's weather might be okay, really, since we were going to be lifting up a lot of old railroad ties and other assorted railway junk.

Driving over we spotted a DOR snake on the road just inside Johnson County.  It was a huge Diamondback Water Snake (Nerodia rhombifer rhombifer), fully four feet long and sadly, just killed that morning.  Alive, this must have been one spectacular water snake!  I gathered it into a plastic shopping bag to take over to the Illinois Natural History Survey when I returned home.  Jim has a portable GPS unit inside his truck, so I was able to add precise coordinates to the data I was recording in my notebook.   We hopped back in the truck and continued heading east.

We hadn't been at the tracks more than a few minutes when the first herp was unearthed, a nice Spotted Salamander.  There were plenty of low, wet places on either side of the tracks, giving us some good chances at a number of salamanders this day.

Matt scored the first serpent of the day, finding a good-sized Black Rat Snake inside an old railroad switch box.  More or less typical of the obsoleta found around here, retaining a ghost of a blotched pattern on its dorsum.  Way to go Matt!  We tucked the critter right back in the box when our visit with it was over.  On to bigger and better things, we hoped.

I got the next good find - a Marbled Salamander under a tie section.  I was hoping we would find one, as most of the guys hadn't seen one in the wild before.  I hadn't made any promises, but I had said our chances were good.  Whew!  Pressure's off, Mike.  I think Ambystoma opacum is the most beautiful of North American salamanders.  I'm not sure if Jim and Matt and Jeff agree with me, but I'm sure they found it to be a beautiful creature nonetheless.  We turned up a second Marbled a bit later, a male, with the distinct white bars on the dorsum resembling bones.

Fortunately for us, the railroad wasn't big on carting out their old replacement ties, so there were plenty of them for us to turn as we slowly made our way down the tracks.  We turned up more opacum, a few juvenile Fence Lizards, and a nice female Five-Lined Skink (Eumeces fasciatus).  Also present were a number of Ground Skinks (Scincella laterale), the most common lizard here, and perhaps the most common herp.