Kansas ranch

We are about to embark on our second week of fieldwork. Students have had the weekend at home to do laundry and regroup before we head off to Barber County and the Alexander Ranch. I’m told that this will be the first KU party to visit the ranch in 40 years.

Our hope is that with a little rain we might also be among the few to ever hear a chorus of the Red-spotted toad in Kansas. Our second stop will be Baxter Springs in Cherokee County, home to a number of salamanders found nowhere else in the state.

Last week was a great success. I’m so proud of the students! Many are pre-health care students headed for careers as nurses, doctors, and physical therapists. Perhaps unlikely participants in a field biology course, but here they are catching lizards, snakes and frogs. While handing a prairie king snake at the end of last week, one student remarked “If you’d told me a week ago that I’d be wrangling snakes for a photo session, I’d have told you that you were nuts!” Yet, here she was, pillowcase held over the snake on a picturesque rock set against a landscape of sandstone, mixed grasses, and desert plants at Wilson State Lake.

Our most exciting finds last week were the abundance of Collared lizards in central Kansas, the grass-swimming Glass lizard (which has no legs), some “horned toads” (really lizards), and two 5’ long Coachwhip snakes. Who knows what this week will hold. 

-David McLeod, instructor