Lick Creek Wildlife Area
Tuesday, October 18, 11:15 AM to 1:00 PM (Over half a month ago!)
Temperature: 60-ish degrees Fahrenheit
Weather: Cloudy
Lick Creek Wildlife Area is one of my favorite spots in Springfield, and a lot of it has to do with finding salamanders. This is the best spot to find salamanders I've ever visited. On the way in, we spotted Downy, Red-bellied, and possibly a Pileated Woodpecker, though I didn't get any pictures.
The first amphibian we found was a Southern Leopard Frog (Lithobates sphenocephalus), one of the several amphibian species in this woodland/marshland/lake...land. There's one concealed above in the leaf litter, near the center of the photograph.
If you can't see the one above, we caught a couple more. Overall, four or five were seen, and three were caught. However, we didn't come here for Leopard Frogs:
It had rained a bit recently, so the salamanders had emerged from their burrows. During dry weather, or during high/low temps, Smallmouth Salamanders hide deeper underground. Like most herps, they are easiest to see after a rain. Smallmouths are in the group known as Mole Salamanders, named for their digging habits. They burrow, but when the water table rises, up cometh the salmanders!
Meanwhile, I spotted several birds, including about ten White-crowned Sparrows (Zonotrichia leucophrys), five Yellow-rumped Warblers, a Hairy Woodpecker, two Northern Flickers, twenty-seven American White Pelicans (a couple pictured at top), an Eastern Phoebe. two Great Egrets, and three Great Blue Herons.
I didn't see many birds, as it's very difficult to be paying attention to amphibians and birds at the same time, especially with ten people discovering yet more frogs and salmanders all around you. We found a few Northern Cricket Frogs, and then I discovered this little beauty:
Western Chorus Frogs (Pseudacris triseriata) are incredibly abundant here in the spring, but they seem to vanish come summer. I've found a couple this year in this same grassy area just east of the largest marsh. Doubtless many of the frogs jumping into the marsh's outflow were also Chorus Frogs. I personally believe that this is the most attractive frog species in this part of Illinois.
[Inside Joke Alert]
A friend of mine would probably prefer Hate Toad instead: https://www.reddit.com/r/topofreddit/comments/533rao/hate_toad_has_no_legshate_toad_needs_no_legs/
[Inside Joke Over]
Moving on...
I've seen all kinds of crazy insects here, but this grasshopper (katydid?) takes the cake for the most colorful. As usual with insects, I haven't the foggiest when it comes to the species.
Technically, this wasn't seen on this trip, but as I saw it in this spot back in August and forgot to include it, it's coming up here. This is a Robber Fly, a large, predatory fly that is about as long as my pinky finger (two inches) and fairly terrifying. It eats lots and lots of mosquitoes, and back in August when I saw it, it certainly had plenty to eat! Thankfully, the mosquitoes are far less common here come September onwards. Still, I was out November 1 here, and there were plenty!
Keep eating, Robber Flies! (Not that you can read this!)
The reason this insect gets its name is that when capturing prey, it holds them under its body, like a sack of loot from a robbery, I guess. Some of these common names show far more imagination than I think most people could conceive nowadays.
Speaking of people, here's a friend (Homo sapiens) from class. Below is another friend who believes he's found corn dog plants. (For the unaware, these are cattails. Corn dogs don't grow on plants.)
My last find of the day was our final amphibian species, Bullfrogs (Lithobates catesbeianus). We found three, including one with a missing foot that was nevertheless quite healthy. I found the first two Bullfrogs, hunkered under a log in the middle of the marsh, quite torpid.
On the way back to our cars, nearly everyone but me saw a Pileated Woodpecker, although it was in the same area where I had probably seen it before. We also heard a Red-headed Woodpecker. Ah, but for a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, we might have had every Illinois woodpecker in one trip! Still, twenty-three Smallmouth Salamanders in about an hour is nothing to sneeze at. It's great that even here,on the northern edge of the manicured, sterilized subdivisions of upper-class Chatham, such biodiversity occurs. Catching thirty-five odd amphibians of five species is great for an hour's trip in this part of the world, and there were many, many frogs we did not catch.
I'm just hoping someday for this place's elusive Kirtland's Snakes to reveal themselves. One of the rarest snakes in Illinois, Kirtland's Snakes have been spotted here a few years ago by a friend of mine, and it's a goal of mine ever since learning of them to find one here. They are state-threatened in Illinois, and they are only months away from being put on the federal endangered species list. Nocturnal, semiaquatic, and shy, it's not likely that I'll find them anytime soon.
Then again, I've got a pretty good track record here for finding nocturnal, semiaquatic, and shy herps:
http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S32105305
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