We had driven all night to reach our rendezvous point just west of Kansas City by seven o'clock Monday morning.  Sleeping in the car means getting very little sleep at all, but that way we don't waste the daylight hours on travel.

Jim, Jeff and Dav arrived shortly after we did, and after introductions all around we headed for our first herping spot of the day.  The sky was overcast, and the temperature a little cool in the mid seventies, and the wind was blowing fairly hard out of the southwest.  We had arrived - here we were on the eastern edge of the Flint Hills with five days of herping ahead of us!

First herp - break out the cameras!
Image by Tracey Mitchell.

An abandoned farm was our first destination, one with plenty of wood and tin to 'lift'.  Jim got the first herp right inside the gate, a nice male Prairie Racerunner.  We fanned out to work the site.  Rick turned up a Northern Prairie Skink under a board.  This was a new species for me, one I was hoping to find, and I think it was the only one found on the trip as it turned out.  A little while later I lifted a small piece of plywood to uncover my first Great Plains Skink (Eumeces obsoletus).  Now these are some awesome lizards!  This was the first of many seen on the trip, but for me they lost no luster with each find.  They are like little Prairie Tegus - powerful legs and jaws, devouring all manner of invertebrates and perhaps some small vertebrates as well.

Prairie Racerunner - Image by Rick Milas

In the meantime, Dav was off uncovering some Prairie Ringneck Snakes and Jim had found a 'nest' of Black Rat Snakes under a piece of tin.  Three Elaphe obsoleta constitutes a nest, does it not?  These specimens had the nice red coloration between some of the scales that we don't see often in Illinois.

Behind the barn was a large stack of corrugated roofing, which required a 'lifter' at each end, and a 'catcher' in the middle.  Tracey was the catcher, scanning each layer as it came to light.  A skink...a skeletonized racer.  Last layer...movement...a fuzzy black and white tail!  SKUNK!  I could hear the roofing tin clang down behind me as I made tracks.  When I turned around, everyone else had retreated to places of safety - Tracey must have jumped or flown since he was twice as far away as anyone else!  I can't say I blame him - getting skunked in the first hour of the first day would have been a disaster, not to mention a long trip tied to the luggage rack...

A few more GPS (Great Plains Skinks) and some Ringnecks, and two more Prairie Racerunners were the last of our finds at this stop.  Pretty good results for the work of twenty five minutes, including two new species!  We were off to a good start.