We got up fairly early the next morning and broke camp, heading east into the Red River Gorge area. We found a campground close to the areas we planned to work, threw up our tents and headed to our first spot, a boardline running along a small creek. The 'boards' were actually sheets of corrugated metal roofing, but unfortunately we could not turn up anything more substantial than a Midland Water Snake. These sheets were close enough to the creek to allow adult Nerodia to use them on a regular basis, and perhaps gravid females took advantage of the heat trapped underneath them.

We continued working up the creek when we ran out of tin to flip, and this yielded a few creekside salamanders, including some Twolined and Northern Duskies. The creek and the little valley it flowed down began to rise into the hills, and the trees closed in on all sides. We passed some large blocks of sandstone that had broken loose and tumbled down the slope, so long ago that mosses, ferns and other plants had taken hold in any available niche within the stone. I got to thinking about these stone blocks; they anchored a moist, but not overly wet, environment, and the layered sandstone provided many long and narrow cracks and crevices. I hiked up to one to get a closer look. "Hey, this looks like a good spot for Green Salamanders," I said as I scanned one of the mossy sides. About ten seconds after my declaration, my eyes settled on an adult Green Salamander, wedged into a narrow crack. "Got one!" I crowed.

I am far from being an expert where salamanders are concerned, but every once in a while it's nice to make the right call. I had done some homework on the habitat requirements for Aneides aeneus, and fortunately for us we were at the right place at the right time!  I allowed myself a moment of smug satisfaction - here was a species I had long coveted, since receiving my first Conant's field guide thirty five years ago.

We needed a closer look, and pictures of this beauty, and so it was gently teased and twigged out of its narrow confinement and carried down to the trail. What an amazing creature this was! The black and green marbling was an exquisite color combination. The head and body were flattened and depressed to facilitate slipping into very small spaces, and yet the limbs were long and well developed, with elongated toes clearly designed for climbing and clinging. The Green Salamander is known to climb trees, and some western forms of Aneides were recently discovered living in fern mats high in the crowns of tall Redwoods.

After photographs, we returned the Greenie to its crevice. Poking around a bit more, Jeff and Jim turned up several more aeneus, including two small juveniles which differ little to none from adults.. Jeff also found a very nice adult Wood Frog, which also made me very happy, since I hadn't seen one for a few years and here was a beautiful specimen to photograph.