Fairfax City Beaver Dam Reservoir

Nature in Ruins

Went out today looking primarily for snakes. Weather was cloudy with a brief down pour follwoed by sunshine. Explored areas along a river bank for northern water snakes and queen snakes. Nothing to be found under the saucer plate looking rocks-where you’d expect to find these kinds of snakes. In fact the only critters present under these rocks were helgramites and worms.  Decided to give the woods and slopes a go.

Had better luck in this region. Found one Northern Brown Snake under the bark of a rotted tree lying on the ground. 

further inland and up a slope

I found a huge slimy salamander-the biggest one I ever seen.  Infact I thought at first that I had some sort of ambystoma -a marbled variant however there is no mistake about the sticky slime that was left on my finger indicating that indeed I had found a slimy.

After letting the slimy go I glanced over and saw a really cool ornate male box turtle.

While the carapace seemed somewhat ordinary the animals body and plastron were not. I did not get a photo of the animals body and was too impatient to wait for it to come out of its shell. So after picking it up I decided to inspect the underneath and discoverd that it wasn’t the typical solid cream or yellow color but instead predominantly darker

I put this guy back on the ground then headed over to some rocky ledges to flip some small flat “shale” type rocks. I did this for about a half an hour and eventually found  three ringneck snakes under one rock. On my way home I did see one northern water snake in the river and removed a northern brown snake from the road. altogether a fun excursion but admittingly I am getting anxious to find something different.