In this contribution to The Drift Fence, friends Cole (CT) and Luke (LP) share their summer 2023 adventures field herping in the prairies of Saskatchewan.

CT: Earlier last year, I moved to southwestern Saskatchewan to start a new job as a biologist in a landscape I was unfamiliar with. It was here I met my good friend Luke Peta and colleague-turned-mentor Dr. Nicholas Cairns. With Dr. Cairns continued advice, Luke and I were soon taking part in a new and exciting hobby known as "herping". Armed with our cameras and a list of herps that needed their photos taken, we embarked on what would turn into an entire summer of trips searching far and wide for amphibian and reptiles.

LP: The first herping trip Cole and I embarked on was to find a Greater Short-horned Lizard in Grasslands National Park. We searched near a popular trail until we found a yearling lizard on a rock. After that we were able to locate a mature female lizard, the first adult we found in the 2023 season. We later returned to the same spot with a larger group and located a young-of-the-year Eastern Yellow-bellied Racer. We also visited known locations for Bullsnakes and Prairie Rattlesnakes hoping to photograph them. We managed to photograph three large bull snakes in an area in the west block of Grasslands National Park.

CT: On rainy evenings in the spring, Luke and I took to driving local roads in the hopes of catching amphibians enjoying the moisture. These evenings provided an abundance of Tiger Salamanders on the move between wetlands and the constant din of Boreal Chorus and sometimes Northern Leopard Frogs was very pleasant to our ears. One evening we observed many large Plains Spadefoot Toads with scarred noses from their burrowing activities. I think we were both equally excited about seeing these for the first time and agreed that they looked silly.

LP: One weekend, me, Cole, and another friend Karannina headed out to the Great Sandhills near Sceptre, Saskatchewan. One of our goals during summer 2023 was to head to the Great Sandhills to photograph the endangered Ord's Kangaroo Rat and the toad trifecta in Saskatchewan (Plains Spadefoot Toad, Great Plains Spadefoot Toad, and Canadian Toad). We arrived in Sceptre, headed to the sandhills to scout during the day, and hoped for a glimpse of our bucket list snake, the Plains Hog-nosed Snake. We spotted orioles and Thirteen-lined Ground Squirrels during the day but no sightings of any target species. After a quick return to Sceptre to make camp we returned to the hills at 9:30 pm. Armed with GPS, headlamps, cameras, and newly acquired landscape knowledge from our scouting trip, we started out into the dark. As the sun set, the world came alive: Coyotes started howling in the distance and the first toad activity started. Great Plains Toads emerged out of the dunes and sandy trails. The three of us were excited for this lifer species! Soon more toads emerged, including the Plains Spadefoot Toads, which was a lifer for Karannina. These spadefoots are perfectly adapted to their near desert environment and are a different colour than those we observed in southern Saskatchewan. The night was filled with many toad sightings and we used our headlamps and the reflection of the toad eyes to guide our way. After three hours in the dark we located a pair of glaring eyes that didn't belong to a toad but instead to an Ord's Kangaroo Rat! On the way back to camp, we spotted a giant Gray Tiger Salamander and immediately stopped the vehicle. The beast was crossing the road and we snapped photos while it crossed. It soon disappeared into the grassy ditch. The three of us made it back to camp, ecstatic!

CT: A day trip that took us two hours east of our homebase in Val Marie, Saskatchewan, produced our first ever sightings of Smooth Greensnakes, a tiny but beautifully-coloured species. Their attempts at mimicking waving grass in the wind provided us with a few laughs and great opportunities for photographs. The following weekend, we made another trip to the Great Sandhills area and successfully observed all three of Saskatchewan's toad species in one night – the Saskatchewan toad trifecta at last! The next day with snakes on our minds, we drove to a new area in the hopes of crossing two new species off our list. The day started bleak as we discovered our first target, a Plains Hog-nosed Snake, recently dead on a gravel road. An hour later, spirits soared as an inspection of a very large rock produced an amazing observation. As our eyes followed the disappearing tail of the largest Bullsnake, hundreds of young-of-the-year Prairie Rattlesnakes materialised before our eyes along the rock margins. Soon the warning sounds of adults nestled underneath, filled the air and confirmed the fact that this was indeed a special rock. Better yet, mixed in amongst the rattlers was another target species, the Western Terrestrial Gartersnake! That was a day to remember!

LP: With one major Saskatchewan reptile still left on our list, Cole, Karannina, and I orchestrated a herping trip to get our target species and maximise our opportunities to find new species we didn't even have on our radar. We took an extra day off and headed to Spruce Woods Provincial Park, Manitoba. This was a seven hour drive from our home base and the three of us headed out after work. When we arrived at 1 am, the place was alive with Racoons running around, Coyotes howling, and Barred Owls calling next to camp. After searching and locating the Barred Owls (a lifer for me) we went to bed in preparation of an early morning searching for herps. We woke up sleep-deprived and recruited Karannina's family from Winnipeg to bring our search team up to seven. We headed out in the early morning to hopefully get some Red-bellied Snakes. As we started hiking, I noticed a small brown-coloured snake immediately retreat to a hole without getting a positive ID. We soon found a Red-sided Gartersnake, common in Manitoba but not in southern Saskatchewan. After a couple hours of hiking, we found our main target species: a Plains Hog-nosed Snake, the species that this trip was predominantly planned around! We would later find three more hog-nosed snakes and missed several small snakes, some of which were likely Red-bellied Snakes. Cole spotted a small tree frog, another of our main targets, on a leaf near a wetland. We couldn't be sure of its species identification, either a Gray Treefrog or a Cope's Gray Treefrog, both of which are known occur in the area but these species can only be distinguished by their call or genetics. With the red-sided, hog-nosed and treefrog crossed off the list, we decided to try and target Snapping Turtles, Red-bellied Snakes, Western Painted Turtles, and Prairie Skinks. These species have very different habitats, and so we prioritized lakes, wetlands and the river to try to find the elusive Snapping Turtle. These turtles are often cryptic and predominantly submerged underwater, and our search was unsuccessful. We targeted Prairie Skink habitat one more time and were not able to find them either. This left us with three out of six targets hit.

CT: The last target, an adult Eastern Yellow-bellied Racer, eluded the two of us for multiple trips late in the fall. When Luke finally managed a good sighting he had gone into the field at least three times. For me, it took six trips to finally lay eyes on the beautiful snake basking in the late October sunlight. In another 36 hours, the herping season would come to a close when a change in weather blanketed the landscape in a fresh coating of snow. In the end, the only Saskatchewan herps we didn't cross paths with were the Red-bellied Snake and Snapping Turtle. However, this just gives us more reason to take on herping again as a hobby next year!