I finally finished typing up the data for 2009...

At least from the Rite in the Rain book anyway. All that's left is the trap data from the storm water pond on west campus.
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Alright let me take a step back.
Over the summer I did a pretty general, very opportunistic survey of the eastern panhandle of west virginia. A lot of the work done was road surveys, but I did a lot of visual work too. I tossed over rocks, and sloshed through ponds and everything.
I'm going to do some more analysis before it's all said and done but here is the simpliest breakdown of what I found.

Total Species 32 (Which is out of a possible 62 that's better than 50%)

Species Break down by group
10 Anurans - American Toad, Bullfrog, Cricket Frog, Fowler's Toad, Green Frog, Grey Tree Frog, Leopard Frog, Pickeral, Spring Peeper, Upland Chorus Frog
10 Snakes - Black Racer, Black Ratsnake, Smooth Earthsnake, Worm Snake, Watersnake, Garter Snake, N. Ring-Neck Snake, Queen Snake, Timber Rattlesnake, Copperhead
1 Lizard -Five-lined Skink
7 Salamanders - Long-tailed Salamander, Redback Salamander, Red-Spotted Newt, Two-Lined Salamander, Northern Dusky Salamander, Northern Red Salamander,
4 Turtles -Painted Turtle (Eastern and Eastern X Midland intergrades), Snapping Turtles, Red-Eared Sliders, Box Turtles

What's interesting about the 2009 herping season is that I managed to finally start seeing some "new" species for me. Worm snakes, copperheads, queen snakes, long-tails, etc are all new for my life list. And some of them were more widely distributed than I first thought.
I put untold amount of man hours in this year. (Next year I'll probably try to count the man hours... try to get a little bit more quantitative anyway.) That's probably why I picked up so many new species.
I didn't pick up two species from the 2005 search, Milk Snakes and Hognose Snakes. This was a pretty big dissapointment. In the case of the hognose snake I was in the same area all saw them before twice in 2009. I guess you take whatever you can get.
I still haven't seen Wood Turtle and Stinkpots in my "surveys" even though I did see them quite frequently years ago. I'm suprised I haven't seem them since.
I did attempt to build aquatic turtle traps this year, and in our two week trial run the one we tried out worked very well, even without bait.
I'm looking forward to more sampling with traps in 2010.