Working across the slope still I saw a small pond down the hill a short distance away.  Could be a likely spot for a Blotched Water Snake, I thought, and headed down for a look.  I walked the bank slowly and quietly, had only moved a few feet when I spied a young adult water snake in the shallows about four feet from shore.  The mud and muck were pretty thick - I wouldn't get close very easily.  What to do?  I slowly reached out with my snake hook held under the surface, slipped it underneath the midsection and then flipped the wee beastie ashore, where I made a quick grab.  Rarely do I ever need to use a snake hook (it's more of a walking stick and a camera monopod), so I got some smug satisfaction out my maneuver.  Too bad there was nobody around to impress.

The snake in hand was indeed a Blotched Water Snake, which I was happy to see - this was the last of the Plainbellies, the last erythrogaster for me to meet up with.  I took his picture and then let him go about his business back at the pond.

Elsewhere and in the meantime, Dav had found a juvenile Speckle and a great looking Red Milk, which I missed and ended up seeing later in pictures.  Apparently I missed out on a couple Plains Garter Snakes as well.  It's hard to see everything with such a large group spread out.

We had run out of hillside and ended up swinging down towards the pond from the other side.  I heard a Chorus Frog clicking from a small puddle under a couple cedar trees, and strove to get a look - I thought we might be far south enough to be in the range of the Spotted Chorus Frog, a species I've wanted to see for a long time.  Tracey gave me a hand and we managed to spot the little croaker, but never managed to catch him.  At our approach he would jump into the thick, low-lying cedar branches and disappear from view.  He was definitely a Chorus frog with dark green spots; thinking it over later with a field guide handy, it was probably a spotted version of the Western Chorus Frog , Pseudacris triseriata triseriata.   We were a bit too far north and east for it to be a Pseudacris clarkii. 

A number of our group had converged at the pond now, where a pair of adult Blotched Water Snakes were observed copulating in the shallow water.  We called in the rest of the gang on the radio to have a look - despite all of our collected time in the field, copulating snakes is not something you see very often.  We took pictures and Dav and Jeff shot some video.  At one point the male broke off and swam out into the center of the small pond, while the female moved along the bank a few feet.  Shortly the male came back to her, and they resumed where they left off.  Dav found a juvenile nearby, some proof of a viable population here at this tiny pond.  Several Plains Leopard Frogs were scared up on the bank, one possible food source for these water snakes.

It was past noon now, and we had an afternoon hookup with some local herpers planned, so we headed back to the vehicles.  Close by Ken turned a big rock we all managed to overlook, and found a very nice Prairie Kingsnake, the first of the trip...