My destination on Wednesday morning was the St. Mark's Refuge south of Tallahassee, along the coast.  I needed to get there early to meet up with Pierson Hill, who graciously agreed to let me hang out with him on his 'morning rounds'.  Pierson was running a feral hog trapping project, thinning the herds in the refuge on the behalf of the Flatwoods Salamander (Ambystoma cingulatum).  The hogs tend to invade and trample the breeding areas for this endangered salamander.

We headed out in his pickup truck, with a barrel of fermented seed corn back in the bed to replenish the traps.  Pierson had a small plastic container with him, the contents being a pair of cingulatum, captured a few days before.  All of the data necessary for documentation had been gathered for these two specimens (data is taken on all observed salamanders), and they were to be released where they had been found.  I would have the unexpected opportunity to photograph these two before their release.

We bounced along the sand roads from trap to trap, not seeing any herps but having a good time talking about them nonetheless.  It's always a treat to meet up with others in the field and swap stories.

We reached the spot where the two Flatwoods sallies were to be released.  The area was an old logging deck, with a number of small log sections half buried in a wet, open field, where water pooled in the lowest of spots.  Ambystoma cingulatum breeds here in these low, wet places during late fall and winter, returning afterwards to the pine flatwoods where they spent the rest of the year underground for the most part.

We took some photographs and then it was time to let these animals go, but when Pierson rolled over a log he found yet another Flatwoods Salamander!  Well now, here was something even better, a new species that now could be added to my life list.  Pierson indicated that the prevailing wisdom was that you could not find this species under logs, much less this late in the year - I was pleased that our find went against the grain.  We rolled a number of other logs in the area, but found no more cingulatum, although I did turn up a small Eastern Garter Snake.  I suppose the little sirtalis would eat any larvae and smaller adult Flatwoods Salamanders it came across.  Everything has to eat!

We took more photographs of this new salamander, from which more data would have to be taken before release.  I was very happy with the chain of events, as this was a species I had had little hope of seeing, given the lateness of the year for them to still be in breeding locales, along with my vast inexperience with this salamander.  I was sure this would stand up as one of my best finds for 2006.

The hog traps replenished, Pierson and I flipped some tin and investigated some outbuildings, and I managed to turn up a Southeastern Fivelined Skink (Eumeces inexpectatus), another for the life list.  I had seen a number of these in the past, but this was the first one I was able to get my hands on and examine the ventral scales on the tail, which were of uniform size (the Fivelined Skink and Broadhead Skink have wider ventral scales on the tail).  I didn't get a great picture but I was please to examine the lizard.  I also managed to get my hands on a female Broadhead Skink, hunkered down under an old section of plank.  It was nice to get a hold on one before it got a hold on me for a change!