Field Guide

With its stout body and thick forearms, the rare Illinois chorus frog may at first appear more like a toad. It lives in open, sandy areas that were formerly sand prairie grasslands and wetlands of southeastern Missouri.

The upland chorus frog is a small gray or tan frog with dark dorsal stripes that are narrow or broken into a series of dashes or spots. In Missouri, it occurs only in the southeastern portion, including the southeastern Ozark Highlands as well as the Mississippi Alluvial Basin.

Blanchard's cricket frog is a nonclimbing member of the treefrog family. It lacks the adhesive toe pads associated with treefrogs. It occurs statewide. The call is a metallic “gick, gick, gick.”

Prairie racerunners are fast, alert, ground-dwelling lizards. They live in open areas like fields, grasslands, and rocky, south-facing hillsides, including Ozark glades. They are related to the whiptail lizards that live in the western United States.

The prairie lizard is a small, gray to brown, rough-scaled lizard common in open forests. It often lives around country homes and rock gardens and on stacks of firewood and split rail fences.

The eastern collared lizard is colorful and has a long tail. In Missouri, this species is mostly restricted to rocky glade habitats in the southern half of the state.

The eastern gartersnake and red-sided gartersnake are Missouri's most common gartersnakes. The color is variable, but there are normally three yellowish stripes, one down the back and one on each side. There are narrow black bars between the scales along the upper lip.

The red-bellied snake is one of Missouri's smallest snakes. It is gray or reddish brown on top, usually with narrow stripes, and bright red or orange below. It occurs nearly statewide but appears to be absent from the northwest and southwest corners.

The flat-headed snake is Missouri's smallest snake. It is found in the southern half of the state except the far southeastern corner.

A medium-sized, striped snake of wet prairies and marshes, the plains gartersnake occurs mainly in Missouri's north-central and northwestern counties, with isolated populations in and west of the St. Louis area.