1445-1610, I was out starting to clean up the garden, but ... I found some things. We had put down some cardboard several places last year to keep the weeds down. At this point, the cardboard was fairly decomposed, but parts of it provided suitable cover for a couple of reptiles. As I began to remove the old cardboard and undecomposed boxing tape, etc., I found a Western Skink and Northwestern Garter Snake taking refuge under this cover. Intending to do some tilling or weed-whacking in the area, I moved the animals over to a large wood pile and wished them well.

The good fortune of the garden cleaning effort spurred me to look around a bit elsewhere. I have placed plenty of small logs and bark pieces along our north property boundary that adjoins a neighbor who has a pond where Long-toed Salamanders breed. These salamanders are not hard to find under such debris in the wet times of the year. I checked a few cover objects and easily found three different individuals.

When we moved to this property in 2013 and I began to find Long-toed Salamanders here, I realized that regional herpetological guides did not show the species as occurring in the Umpqua Valleys. Upon inquiring with others, Ray Davis (former Umpqua National Forest Biologist) told me that he had found the species in seasonal wetlands in east Sutherlin area in the 1990s. Jerry Mires, retired BLM biologist told me last month that some years ago the species had been found in the Stewart Park Wildlife Pond and Nature Trail area (I don't recall what year) in Roseburg. I know of no other records at the moment, but there is a lot of private land and very few naturalists or herpetologists in the area, so their spatial distribution here in the Umpqua Valleys is unknown.

Posted on May 6, 2017 04:33 AM by umpquamatt