I spent ten minutes or so trying to get this hyperactive salamander to sit still for a photograph. I found it under a rock at the edge of a stream. As soon as it was exposed, it leaped into the water, floated downstream about four or five feet, then lodged itself beneath an underwater rock. I then moved the new cover rock to expose it again, tried to grab it, and watched it flop and wriggle out of my hands and back into the stream. This slapstick adventure was repeated several times before we made a truce: it agreed to sit still on the shore for no more than ten seconds if I agreed to stop bothering it.

I was unsuccessfully trying to locate a small frog that I had seen hop into the water when I noticed this mostly-submerged salamander out of the corner of my eye.

I had originally identified this as Desmognathus fuscus but salamander expert Todd Pierson set me straight on iNaturalist and ID'ed it as D. quadramaculatus. Later still that species was split into four, pushing this observation into D. amphileucus.