Eastern Fence Lizards

Last Sunday I joined up with some fellow Ohio University students and traveled to the Raccoon Ecological Management Area (REMA) in Vinton County. The goal of the trip was to capture as many Eastern Fence Lizards as we could in order to collect habitat data and later collect data on the individuals themselves.

Here are 7 of the 9 individuals we captured that day. I'll explain how the capturing process worked later in the post. Anyway, those are all Eastern Fence Lizards, Sceloporus undulatus. Now, you might think "Lizards? In Ohio?" But it's true; most people don't think of Ohio as a home for lizards, but we actually have 5 species (Eastern Fence Lizard, Common Five-Lined Skink, Broad Headed Skink, Little Brown Skink, and the non-native Common Wall Lizard). Eastern Fence Lizards are found in southern and eastern parts of Ohio, where hills and forests are the norm.

Eastern Fence Lizards are a smaller lizard; they only reach lengths of 4-7.25 inches long. As you can see, they can easily fit in the palm of your hand. They like to bask in the sunlight on rocks, fallen logs, and other similar things in the forest. You will also find them on trees; in fact, they will many times run up trees to get away from anything.

This is the underside of a male individual. This view is something most people don't see unless you have a lizard in hand, like we did. The sparkling blue is brilliant, even more so in person than in the photo above. Males also have some blue under their head, but the females will get blue there as well.

So how in the world did we catch a small, quick lizard? Have you ever seen people on TV try to catch alligators by putting a snare around its head? That is basically the same thing we did, except the snare was very tiny. As you can see above, one of the students is holding a fishing rod out toward the lizard, which is the tiny thing on the right side of the base of the tree. At the end of the fishing rod is the tiny snare. You would simply try to get as close as you can to the lizard without scaring it off, reach over with the fishing rod, put the snare around the lizard's head, then carefully yank it so the snare closed around the head. And now you have a captured lizard! The hardest part, though, is trying to find the lizards in the first place to snare. They blend in so well with their surroundings that it takes a very sharp eye to find one.

This is the lizard that I personally captured. It was a very calm individual; it never tried to bite me when I was holding it. I was, however, bitten the next day when I was helping gather stamina data. Their mouths are so tiny that it only feels like a small pinch.

We also looked for snakes, but sadly only found one. This is a Wormsnake, Carphophis amoenus. I believe this individual is one of the Midwestern Wormsnakes, a subsecies. Wormsnakes are small snakes found in the southern parts of Ohio. Wormsnakes burrow in the dirt and leaf debris, searching for food. As a result, people do not see them often, even though they can be really common. This one was only found because someone decided to flip the rock it was hiding under. Timber Rattlesnakes have also been found in the area we were at and we were all really hoping to find one, but sadly we didn't see any.


Reptiles weren't the only things we came across on the trip. Spring bird migration is really starting to pick up, and this trip turned up a few singing Black-and-White Warblers and a singing Prairie Warbler. Keep on the lookout for migrants these next few weeks!

Backpacking at Zaleski State Forest

Hey guys! I finally have some time to write up a little post. I've been really busy lately with schoolwork, but with Spring Break I've been able to catch a slight break.

Anyway, on February 21-23, I went on a "Winter Backpacking Skills" backpacking trip through Ohio University's Outdoor Pursuits. They put on many trips throughout the semester which are open to anyone (but they're normally a bit cheaper for OU students). This backpacking trip was supposed to teach us "winter backpacking skills," but the weather had other ideas in mind. Saturday we were hiking in short sleeved shirts and shorts; hardly winter at all! Regardless, it was a great trip and here's some photos and a little info on it.

A total of seven of us (two trip leaders and five trip-goers) did the bottom half of the 23 mile backpacking trail at Zaleski State Forest in Vinton County. We did a total of about ten miles. We hiked two miles Friday afternoon to the first campsite, four miles on Saturday to the next campsite, then Sunday we did two miles on a connecting trail that led us back to the first campsite, where we then backtracked the two miles to the parking lot.

The trail was mostly on top of tall Allegheny ridge tops. There were a couple of beautiful vistas, like this one. This was the view on a small rock outcrop next to a small 50 foot cliff or so, and the location of a little snack break on Saturday.

But the trail was not all on ridge tops. Eventually we went down a hill into the bottomlands. Due to the recent snow melt, every water source was swollen, including this tiny creek. As it emptied into a small lake it formed a sort of flooded delta, and as a result the trail sort of disappeared. Eventually we found it once more and navigated our way through the water.

This is an old railway, the Moonville Railroad. Many of you have probably heard of the infamous Moonville Tunnel. Well this is the same line. The actual tunnel is only a couple miles away from this point. But this particular location along the abandoned railroad is the site of an old mining town called Ingham Station. According to the site Waymarking, "At it's peak around 1900, Ingham Station had a store, railroad depot, a mine, schoolhouse, over a dozen residences, and was inhabited by several families." The town was abandoned around 1920 or so, but the backpacking trail now goes right through the remnants.

The Zaleski Backpacking Trail offers many cool points of interest if you're a history geek, like me. On top of ghost towns, the trail follows the Hopewell-Chillicothe-Marietta Road for some of the way. The Hopewell-Chillicothe-Marrietta Road was an ancient Native American footpath that led from earthworks near present day Marietta to the famous Hopewell earthworks near present day Chillicothe. When European settlers came to the area, they followed the footpath too, turning it into a road for stagecoaches and the pioneers. Anyway, part of the backpacking trail runs along this ancient road. The trail also passes a doughnut-shaped earthwork and other historical points of interest.

This was my campsite for the second night. The days might have been warm, but the nights were cold. It was perfect weather for a warm mummy-style sleeping bag. It was definitely a great experience, and I will be going backpacking again for sure.