The little creek puddled out a bit as it neared the road and then was constricted narrowly into a metal culvert that passed beneath the road. Upstream a bit, the creek narrowed and gurgled merrily downhill around and over some boulders. Still further upstream, the boulders were larger and the creek was even more precipitous. Beyond that I couldn’t see from my current vantage point, but I’d soon know the scope of things.

To either side of the creekbed grassy meadows interspersed with small escarpments and many boulders sloped far upward, and at their summits were stands of pines. We started at the bottom and began working our way upward. Tough walking. So we moved to the grassy slopes and slipped and tripped our way to the top (hoping all the while for no encounter with a hidden timber rattler), reaccessed the stream, and began our walk downward. This was a little easier.

We were at this creek in the hopes of finding a seal salamander, Desmognathus montanus, exhibiting piebaldism. Kenny had been told by a researcher that there was a high incidence of this aberrancy at this locale. In fact, his initial information was that all of the seal salamanders in this creek were piebald.



We walked slowly along the creek bed, turning and replacing an occasional likely-looking, water-swept rock along the way. Going was slow, but with the first few salamanders found we determined that definitely not all of the salamanders were piebald. In fact, as the day wore on and one after the other the salamanders proved normal, we began to wonder whether we’d actually find one that was piebald.

We did. In fact we found three, one adult and two juveniles. We extend a big thank you to Kenny’s sources!

More photos under the jump...