FINALLY! THE GREEN SALAMANDER!

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]What's up, everyone? Welcome back. Hope you are doing well. As some of you may remember, a year ago I embarked on a fantastic voyage to find the green salamander.

[00:00:11]And while I found the green salamander, I got some of the world's poorest footage of it, and I swore that day that I would go back out and redeem myself and actually get something that is identifiable in a photo or video.

[00:00:27]Fast forward to May 2026, Memorial Day weekend, and it is raining. Not only is it raining cats and dogs, but the streams, the even the trails have flooded over.

[00:00:41]So, I am going to try to find any salamanders, any frogs, any toads that I can in this weather given how severe it is today.

[00:00:51]Of course, always pick the best days to go out herping.

[00:00:55]Mind you, when I woke up today, I did not go out to look for the green salamander. I just needed a break from life. And so, I took a hike with my family, which was awesome. And we did find salamanders, like these duskies.

[00:01:10]They are northern duskies, Allegheny Mountain Duskies, seal salamanders, all over the place. They've moved to slightly higher ground given some of the flooding, but abundant nonetheless.

[00:01:30]This type of rock outcropping is too wet and would not be a suitable habitat for a green salamander, but I absolutely love this habitat. This gives me tremendous information to build habitats inside glass boxes. So, this is the kind of stuff that I live for right here.

[00:01:59]>> Some really cool shale rock outcroppings along the side of this mountain.

[00:02:08]Lots of lichen and other mosses, some liverworts, ferns growing all in and around this rock structure.

[00:02:19]Things like this are just fascinating to me to see. Sometimes they almost look man-made.

[00:02:25]But again, nature is so interesting.

[00:02:29]And these are some of my most favorite habitats, which is why I build so many of these temperate setups.

[00:02:37]The other great thing about this time of year is the multitude of ferns. I love ferns, one of my most favorite plants, and they grow everywhere, all different types.

[00:02:50]This is not a green salamander. This is a eastern newt that is almost done the red F phase. Amazing animal. I saw tons of these walking along the forest floor.

[00:03:16]Getting closer to some green salamander habitats as I trek towards where I know there are some big rock formations.

[00:03:29]But again, I just can't help myself to look at some of this stuff. Just absolutely love it.

[00:03:48]Again, some really rich habitat to observe and to document and hopefully one day try to replicate or get as close to it as I can.

[00:04:07]Here is a red-backed salamander. There are tons of these woodland salamanders around.

[00:04:26]This is a northern slimy salamander.

[00:04:28]There are tons of these woodland salamanders. They get pretty big, 5 6 7 in.

[00:04:37]And here is a baby slimy salamander.

[00:04:41]These are born this way. They go through the larval period in the egg.

[00:04:46]Now we come to some prime green salamander habitat in these sandstone formations. This is probably my most favorite habitat that I've seen in a very very long time.

[00:05:01]And voila, here it is. The green salamander. I actually found two of them.

[00:05:08]But I got decent footage of this one in situ.

[00:05:14]Finally, after all this time, I get to see one clearly in the wild. If you've been with me on this journey from the other two videos, thank you so much for having some faith that I could actually get this thing on film and expect more green salamander footage in the future as I get better at finding these.