Ben StegengaViews:
Winter Wetlands
For those who know me, it’s no secret that autumn and winter are my favorite seasons, especially here in the Southeast. They offer a much-needed reprieve from summer, which sometimes has me questioning why I live in Georgia at all. Not only does my Minnesota blood long for the crisp night air and frosty mornings that a Georgia winter sometimes provides, but I also eagerly anticipate the suite of species that are most easily observed during these months. It’s the one time of year when I can enjoy my favorite weather and favorite wildlife simultaneously. Of course, most people would likely assume I’m thinking of Eastern Indigo Snakes, since that is the bulk of what I do in the winter, and while I absolutely love indigo snakes, it’s the amphibians who are the true cold weather champions. To me there’s just not much that compares to spending a chilly night in a wetland, surrounded by a chorus of frogs or an aggregation of salamanders. Even better if I have a clear sky full of constellations and a breeze rustling what few leaves remain in the barren canopy. I could quite contently spend an entire night like that, simply soaking up the nocturnal sounds and scenery. Just ask my friends Max and Kevin about the last time we looked for Brimley’s Chorus Frogs, when I happily wandered off into the flooded woods for hours while they froze. Yeah….sorry about that guys
Waiting on the Rain
Unfortunately, we haven’t really had much amphibian approved weather this winter. The Southeast has experienced very dry conditions since summer, and a prolonged drought isn’t very conducive for amphibian activity. So when I was planning indigo surveys for early December and saw a solid three days of rain in the forecast, I became cautiously hopeful. Almost every wetland I’d visited in the last three months had been bone dry, and I knew it would likely take several large rain events before they held any significant water. However, I was sure it would at least get some species moving somewhere, so Kira and I hopped in the truck to begin road cruising.
Road Cruising for the Unexpected
Several years ago, I went on a deep dive, scouring satellite imagery for possible wetlands in this area that might support rare or cryptic species like Eastern Tiger Salamanders, Gopher Frogs, Mole Salamanders, and Chicken Turtles. The goal was to see if I could document these pond-associated species, many of which are declining, and pass those observations on to GADNR. I now have several regular routes spanning three counties that I opportunistically drive during late fall or winter rain events, and they’ve been paying off. Over several years of effort, I’ve found Tiger Salamanders migrating to at least five different wetlands, and I’m sure there are quite a few more to discover. Deep down I’m always hoping for a Gopher Frog, but I know it’s a long shot in this area. So some new Tiger or Mole Salamander sites seemed like the most achievable goals for this week.
A Quiet Night… At First
Frogs are usually the most reliable animals to see during these rain events, but this time they were surprisingly sparse. Every once in a while a Southern Leopard Frog (Rana sphenocephala) would bound into our headlights, prompting some quick evasive maneuvers, but that was about it. Not a Southern Toad or Eastern Spadefoot in sight. Whenever the rain lightened up, I rolled my window down, expecting to hear one of our native chorus frogs calling from the ditches or roadside ponds, but all I heard was the spray from the truck tires and drops on the windshield. It just goes to show how dry it’s been this year. However, the roads were still full of life.
Salamanders on the Move
The most abundant animal we encountered each night was the Central Newt (Notophthalmus viridescens louisianensis). Having lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains, I’m quite used to large quantities of “red efts” on the roads or forest floor in response to soaking rains. But this was the first time I had seen such quantities in South Georgia. The aquatic adults can be plentiful in local ponds and borrow pits, but efts seem harder to come by. This subspecies tends to be much less vibrant than the wider-ranging Red-spotted Newt (N. v. viridescens) to the north, whose efts are famously bright red-orange and sport a row of red port-holes, ringed in black on either side of their bodies. These Central Newts are much less vibrant, and vary between a drab olive to peachy orange, and often lack the lateral red spots altogether. I escorted handfuls of these salamanders off the road and dodged dozens more.
Most of the other salamanders we encountered were all ones you might expect for the area, including a couple gravid Southern Two-lined Salamanders (Eurycea cirrigera) and a handsome Ocmulgee Slimy Salamander (Plethodon ocmulgee). We only found one Eastern Tiger Salamander (Ambystoma tigrinum), but it had sadly been hit by a car just moments before I reached it. That was a real bummer, but we made up for it a bit by finding one of the biggest male Marbled Salamanders (Ambystoma opacum) I’ve ever seen and only the second ever Mole Salamander (Ambystoma talpoideum) recorded for that county.
A Good Night Gets Better
Had this been all we found, I would’ve been happy. It was a decent haul for our first winter rain, however, a chance encounter with one little salamander turned a good night into an extraordinary one and left us completely bewildered. Early in the night, we came to a stop at an intersection, and as I began making my turn, I glanced out my open window onto the asphalt at a peculiar looking caudate. My initial thought was another newt as it was the appropriate size, but the combination of posture, texture, and color quickly ruled that out. In fractions of a second my mind raced through every small Plethodon in the state that wasn’t black and white and just as quickly ruled them all out because we were way too far south. As I turned on the hazard lights, put the truck in park, and threw the door open, I came to the conclusion that it could only be one thing….a Four-toed Salamander (Hemidactylium scutatum). I closed the distance in a couple steps and leaned over to observe the stationary creature, immediately confirming its identity. Its constricted tail base and black and white Dalmatian ventral pattern were unmistakable. My hands went straight to the top of my head and my jaw dropped. “No way!! What the heck!? What the actual heck!?!?” I could barely believe what I was seeing! A Coastal Plain Hemidactylium had not been on my bingo card.
Well Outside the Known Range
Four-toed Salamanders are a wide ranging species, with their stronghold being in the Atlantic states on either side of the Appalachian Mountains as well as the Great Lakes region. Sporadic, disjunct populations also occur along either side of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers as far west as Oklahoma and Louisiana and south into the Florida panhandle. As for Georgia, their distribution is mostly restricted to the Piedmont, with some scattered populations throughout the Blue Ridge and Ridge and Valley regions. Coastal Plain populations are far more rare with most of them occurring between the Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers in extreme southwest Georgia or just south of the fall line in the northeastern Coastal Plain. We were nowhere near any of these known populations. Realizing the likely significance of the find, I placed him in a gallon zip-lock bag and Kira provided our new passenger with some saturated leaf litter to keep him comfy while we continued cruising. Once we called it a night, I set up a temporary enclosure for our new friend, and rattled off an email to Daniel Sollenberger, the state herpetologist, and Dirk Stevenson, my former colleague and naturalist extraordinaire. The following day, they both confirmed it was indeed a county record and range extension of over 70 miles! I took detailed photos the next day to submit as museum vouchers and then released him back off the road where we found him, so he could continue on his journey.
The Habitat Doesn’t Fit
Besides being well outside of known range, we found this record surprising due to the habitat in the immediate area. Four-toed Salamanders are often associated with deciduous or mixed forests and will frequently use shallow pools or boggy wetlands with mossy edges for depositing eggs. They are a very secretive species most of the year, with most observations occurring during dispersal or breeding migrations, or they are flipped under cover around breeding wetlands. The habitat where we found this salamander was comprised almost entirely of dry uplands, including sandhill, with only a few scattered wetlands within 500 meters. Various pine species were the dominant trees, and much of it had a fairly open canopy. The habitat does not resemble the places where I’ve seen this species in north Georgia and Tennessee whatsoever. There were other wetlands in more mesic forest that appeared more suitable, but they’re around a kilometer away and in the opposite direction that the salamander was moving.
More Questions Than Answers
Did this salamander really move that far? Or are they actually eking out a living in the drier habitat? Are they using radically different wetlands in the central Coastal Plain? If so, what wetland characteristics do they need? How rare are they? Are we just really bad at finding them? How many more populations are there this far south? The questions really begin to pile up. The known Coastal Plain populations are so few and far between that our best bet is to extrapolate from some of the nearest sites, and start from there. Dirk Stevenson hypothesizes that they may be utilizing seepage areas with a significant hardwood component; the kind of place one might also find Southern Red Salamanders (Pseudotriton ruber vioscai). These types of seeps are present in the area, but most of the ones we know of are located too far away to be this particular salamander’s breeding site. I started compiling a list of possible sites that could be potentially suitable. It’s going to require some work, but I’m optimistic that if we investigate enough wetlands we’ll eventually turn something up. Fortunately, I have access to a lot of the land in the area, so I’m eager get out there and hopefully start providing some answers to these questions.
Back to the Road, and a Perfect Ending
But first, I wanted to gather a few more data points from the road to help narrow my search. So we wasted no time, and that night we picked up where we left off, cruising that road for as long as the rain lasted. We cruised the next two nights but no more Four-toed Salamanders were found, and we eventually conceded defeat when the rain and cloud cover finally dissipated. Upon arriving back at the Orianne bunkhouse after another late night, we were greeted by the distant metallic “tink” of calling Ornate Chorus Frogs (Pseudacris ornata). Despite being tired, we both knew in that moment what we had to do. That sound meant that some wetlands were finally holding water, so it was time to see if our Tiger Salamander pond was one of them. What we found were essentially just some glorified puddles, but the first wave of Tiger Salamanders had arrived! This population never got sufficient rain to migrate last winter, so they seemed especially eager now. These were Kira’s first live tigers, and it was hard for either of us to hide our excitement. We spent the next 2 hours happily photographing salamanders for future individual ID and pin flagging egg mass locations. And after Kira noticed the first meteor of the ongoing Geminid shower, we made sure to periodically turn off our headlamps and gaze up at the celestial show. It was a perfect way to kick off winter wetland surveys. And that one little unexpected salamander was the icing on the cake. Not only was it a memorable encounter, but it had given me a few more things to think about as I attempt to view this landscape through an ecological lens. It’s a humbling reminder of just how cryptic reptiles and amphibians can be, and no matter how much we think we know, there’s always more to learn.
