The next spot Jim led us to was a long, serpentine ridge on a hilltop, with lots of crevices to peer into and flat rocks to lift.  I was beginning to like Kansas...the wind had died down some and the sun came out and started to warm the day up a bit.  Right away I found a female Eastern Collared Lizard (Crotaphytus collaris collaris) under a flat rock and managed to hang onto it.  I was very pleased to do so; many years had passed since the last time I grabbed a collaris. Some of the other Illinois Boys hadn't seen one close up before so now was their chance.  Before too long a male was found, so everyone had a chance to compare them.

This was our chance to get out into some shortgrass prairie.  There were plenty of interesting plants to observe, and a botanist on board (Tracey) to tell us what we were looking at.  Some great flowering plants were in bloom - Blue Wild Indigo, Eared False Indigo, and everywhere the Showy Evening Primrose.  I've got a lot of work to do on plant identification - if I don't know what I'm looking at, I'll take a picture and try to key it out later.  If I can learn to identify one or two new species each trip, that's pretty good for me.

Blue Wild Indigo

Jim had indicated that Lined Snakes (Tropidoclonion lineatum) were common here and before too long several were turned up near the hilltop.  It's always great to see them - these snakes were common in my back yard as a boy in St. Louis, in a completely different kind of habitat. I believe this was a new species for Ken and Tracey.

The wind had died off and the clouds had thinned out. The day was beginning to gain some heat,  More Collared Lizards, GPS, and Lined Snakes were found.  There were a lot of nice rocks that had Milk Snake written all over them, but nobody was home, unfortunately.  Jim and Dav found a nice Great Plains Narrowmouth Toad (Gastrophryne olivacea).  This was a species a number of us were interested in photographing, but it was a difficult critter to wrangle.  I didn't get a great picture but I think Jim and Jeff did OK.  I love the olive-green coloration of this species.  This one had a reddish tinge on the limbs and toes.

Big Honkin' Prairie Tegu

The ridge finally played out and we headed back over the hills to the vehicles.  The sun was warming things up by the minute, and a promising afternoon stretched out ahead of us...