5 Timber Rattlenakes, Crotalus horridus, found under the same tin
I wish I could share a picture of my face and a recording of the words coming out of my mouth when Phil Peak and I lifted up a piece of our artificial cover and bore witness to the sight in this photograph! Moments before we had found 1 Timber Rattlesnake beneath a sheet of metal and were feeling really happy about that, so you can imagine how cool it was to find 5 more under a single piece just a short distance away. This particular piece of cover was set out between 2 and 3 years ago. We have had some warm weather this spring, but the 5-7 days leading up to the day we made this flip were unseasonably cool with a lot of rain. On the day we arrived conditions had changed and the sun had finally broken through the clouds. These 5 snakes had emerged weeks earlier but after many days of cold temperatures they all congregated at a place where they knew the heat would arrive once the weather broke.

Phil and I were at the right place at the right time.

Several hours later the blazing sun scorched this same piece of metal and caused it to reach temperatures well over 100 degrees and the snake most certainly found a new place to hide…but only after we were able to capture the moment with our cameras! Spring is turning to summer in our area and it appears that mild days are behind us and the real heat of summer lies ahead. We will continue to check our materials, but the real climax of flipping season is probably over for the year. That is kind of depressing, but at least it was good while it lasted and we had the opportunity to be at the right place at the right time after making some effort to set our table.

Eastern Hognose Snake Heterodon platirhinos
This large Eastern Hognose Snake is the first Phil Peak and I ever recorded from Bell County, Kentucky. Phil spotted this snake out basking among a pile of rocks on top of a strip mine surrounded by secondary growth forest. Our group nearly decided not to hunt the area where this snake was located, but Phil liked the looks of it and demanded that we stop and poke around, so it was fitting that he found the nice big Hognose.

While there is no doubt that species diversity is impacted in a negative way by the process of strip mining, the mined areas recover quickly and provide a kind of artificial oasis for many large game species like Bear, Elk, Timber Rattlesnakes, Copperheads, and Hognose Snakes. After many years of experience I can say that I would rather search on strip mines than natural areas where no disturbance has taken place. This snake was a very welcome find on an otherwise slow day and to top it off the snake was just as calm as could be and never played dead. Every year I see people posting pictures and videos of their Hognose Snakes playing dead. That was fun for me once, and since then I prefer to get pictures of the snake BEFORE it goes into the routine.

I don’t know about you, but when Spring time hits I get super busy! All of my exotic pythons are laying eggs, boas are giving birth, colubrids are breeding, cages need to be cleaned, snakes are feeding heavily again, work is really busy, sales are brisk due to tax return season…and on top of all that it is finally time to get out and find some wild animals in nature! I like to travel great distances in search of some of the more difficult to find species, but on some weeks I don’t have the time. So it is nice to be able to get out and find some beautiful herps close to home. I live in Louisville, KY, which is billed as America’s 16th largest city but is really the Nation’s largest big town. Even so, it is possible to find all kinds of neat reptiles and amphibians in urban and suburban settings in my area. Sometimes I am stunned by how close neat animals can be found around the city along roads that I drive by at top speeds most every day. Such was the case with this Cave Salamander Eurycea lucifuga. A member of the Lungless Salamander family, he was found in a suburban neighborhood where you could literally see 11 houses and their backyards. It took all of 5 minutes to find this little guy was hiding under a piece of tree bark after a quick trip to the grocery and other errands. When I got home after my big “hunt” the ice cream I bought was still frozen! Fun Times!!

When taking pictures of reptiles there are two qualities that I struggle to strike a balance between. One is crisp focus/depth of field and the other is proper coloration. In order to get crisp focus across my entire image I use flash so that I can set my f-stops to 18-22. When I do this I get great depth of field, but the flash also puts glare on shiny scales and distorts color. When I do not use flash I get great coloration, but my depth of field suffers and I lose focus quality. This is a very frustrating situation for me that I need to learn how to overcome. In the picture of this corn snake I am very happy with color saturation and lighting but am not happy with my depth of field. Note how there is some blurriness as you move toward the top of the photo. This year I will be experimenting with solutions and hope to find a way to reduce the amount of light my flash units emit so that I can strike a balance between natural coloration and crisp focus/depth of field. Wish me luck, and if you have any secrets please share them with me!!

Savu Pythons (Liasis mackloti savuensis) breeding
I discovered my Savu Pythons (Liasis mackloti savuensis) mating on 25 April 2016. The day before I noticed my female was swelling so even though the male was about to shed, I introduced the female into his cage. They were breeding the following morning. This pair has been bred before with spectacular results. Unlike many other python species, Savus tend to breed when the temperatures rise and days are longer. In fact, during the winter months my adults resume feeding, but as soon as things warm up my males go off food and switch into breeding mode. I am not sure if this breeding will result in a gravid female. Instead, I view this as an early season warm-up for the pair. The female has been properly pre-conditioned and I am hoping for babies later this Fall!

Winter is long, cramped, and filled with stressful family and social gatherings. It is so nice when all that stuff is over, the sun begins to shine again, and Spring arrives in full force. This photo sums up what Spring is all about for me. Few moments in life compare to that rejuvenating and magnificent time when friends can venture out across the countryside and use snake hooks to flip metal with sexed pairs of Kingsnakes preparing to breed underneath. Capturing these in-situ moments with cameras is an absolute must because Winter returns in the blink of an eye and I find myself staring at these pictures on my computer during snowy nights longing for the days when the Sun shines bright and the snakes return. Nothing Beats Spring!!

My first Albino Carpet Python clutch of 2016 hatched from 23-25 March and I was lucky enough to be able to capture several nice pictures of the process.

For me, hatching snake eggs is something that keeps me involved in snakes year after year. It is the big reward. All year long I work hard to clean my snakes and keep them watered. I pay thousands of dollars to keep them warm and on rodents to feed them. My feed night is Friday each and every week, so I never get to go out for a night of fun on Fridays. Instead I am stuck at home after a long day at work with about 5 hours of extra work. But somehow all of that and the other downsides of keeping snakes vanish and disappear once eggs begin to hatch. It is a powerful moment when our eggs hatch and new life is brought forth. Where there once was nothing, there is suddenly something…and it is alive! Life can be messy, so I really liked getting this image where there is tons of bubbly egg goo all around the new living baby snake.

I am often asked why I like snakes and my response is that if you have to ask that question there is no way you would ever be able to understand. Seriously, if you can’t look at a picture of a baby python taking its first look and first breath on earth and find some way to be able to appreciate that the rest of us will enjoy living in an environment where people can marvel at even the lowest forms of organisms entering our rough world for their own one shot at LIFE.

I will never forget my first Kenya Sand Boa experience. I was around 14 years old when I saw my first babies at the local pet store and I had to buy a pair. It took me over a month to pay for them and I took feeding them and making them breeder sized very seriously. By the time I hit 17 I was working at the shop where I bought them and when my female gave birth I called my boss at around midnight to tell him. I was excited, and he was exhausted!(LOL) But when I got to work the next day he had a big banner up across the isles of the store congratulating me. It was the first time I ever bred a Boa. As I inched towards 40 I had bred many species of snakes and learned that they all took up space, so that got me thinking about Sand Boas again. There are no fortunes to be made here, but the fact is that I find the process to be fun. Not sure if this is manopause or not, but here I am breeding these little worms again. Pictured is my holdback female from 2015. Call it what you will, I am guilty as charged!

Last week a friend bought a sexed pair of Spotted Pythons from me. It took him 4 weeks to save up the funds, and during that time he asked me all the right questions and got everything ready. Within two hours after arriving home and getting the snake put away he discovered that one had escaped…the female of course!

I hate the fact that people have to go through things like this, but most of the time it takes a loss and a bad mistake in order to learn. When it comes to keeping snakes it is a fact that there are forces working against us all at every turn. Even when it is legal and you go out of your way to do everything right, all it takes in one tiny detail to ruin everything and foul up all the fun. In my experience I have found that my work is never done and that it is best to always be on the lookout for how I can make things better. In this case the snakes were put in a baby rack made for snakes, but they still got out even though the snake was over 7 months old and no longer a baby. When I put baby snakes in a rack I fold up newspaper and put it under the box so that it is raised up and made even tighter with the top of the rack. Of course, that restricts air flow so I have to drill more holes to make sure my snake can breathe! It seems that every adjustment requires an additional adjustment! The work never ends, and if you think your work is done I bet something will go wrong while you are sitting back relaxing thinking that all is well! Be careful out there fellow snake keeper! It is all in the details!!

I recently took my daughters to their first reptile show. Once inside they were drawn to a booth with dozens of mounted rats and mice along with rat bone necklaces and mouse skull jewelry. I allowed each of my girls to select a specimen, and as I discussed the terms of the price with the two mouse women a long line formed behind me. I watched as everyone in the line attempted successfully to sell their dead rodents. The herp show had gone green and was recycling dead feeders! I learned that there was a demand for dead snakes too! My favorite item was a jumbo rat mounted on remote controlled wheels. I could sure have some fun with that!

In high school I got my hands on Barbours book about Snakes in Kentucky and will never forget gazing at the picture of the Corn Snake and learning that a small and isolated population of these snakes occurred in Kentucky. Little did I know that the names of the other students who checked out that book would be my future bosses and co-workers at The Louisville Zoo, or that my friend Phil Peak and I would one day focus in on this serpent and spend countless hours in the counties that seemed so far away and foreign to me at the time.

It took some effort to locate my first specimen by the time that I was in my 20’s, but once I began to figure them out I was able to locate well over 100 of them in a very confined area. Phil and I were able to establish a small group of these snakes in captivity and we donated babies to educational facilities across Kentucky. We also gave them to people in our local Herp Society so that they could be used in presentations, and also so that our local people would not feel the need to go down and remove additional specimens from the wild. Phil and I had a lot of questions about this isolated population of snakes so we began to record as much information about each specimen as we could. In addition to blotch and scale row counts we were also able to determine when they emerged, when they bred, when they laid eggs, when the babies hatched, and when the adults went back underground to spend the winter. After compiling all of our data we began the process of publishing our work in a scientific format. This process was long and complicated for us, and we were fortunate to meet Danna Baxley who came onboard with our efforts as a co-author and helped us organize the work in a way that was presentable and acceptable to the newly formed Journal of North American Herpetology where it was published in 2015. To anyone interested in the scientific paper, here is a link to the PDF file that can be found on the Center For North American Herpetology website: http://www.cnah.org/pdf/88314.pdf

It is difficult to fully describe everything that was involved in this whole process in the short format here, so I will close it out by saying that the journey from my high school library all the way to being published in a scientific journal was a long and interesting experience that has left me grateful to the local people of rural Kentucky and to my friends Phil Peak and Danna Baxley whose knowledge and patience made possible what I could not have done on my own.

This week I want to share my formula for taking semi close-up pictures of snakes. I like to use these kind of pictures to make business cards, post cards, calendars, and other promotional materials. When trying to sell a snake the buyers want to see as much of the body as possible, so these are not the best option when trying to sell individual specimens, but semi close ups are effective in promoting projects in general. When I take these kind of photos I want for the entire head to be in the picture. I also want the entire frame filled by the body of the animal with as little, “non-snake” materials as possible, especially around the edges of the frame. It is also important to capture as many interesting features of the specimen as possible. You want for everything to be in crisp focus if possible. I took several semi close-up pictures and posted them on social media recently. The picture in this blog got more views, likes, and comments than all the others combined so I would like to try to explain why. At the end of the day the subject needs to grab peoples attention, and this snake certainly does.

Many people in our hobby are sick and tired of seeing Ball Pythons, but even they liked and commented on this picture. The entire head is in the photo and it is in crisp focus, especially the eye. The frame is filled with the body of the snake, with only a little bit of mulch barely visible in perhaps 5% or less of the total field. The Paradox condition of this snake is what makes it interesting, and the semi close-up format really shows off the layering of the pigments. I was able to get some of the additional Paradox markings in the picture with the coils above the head. This snake is also a Super Genetic Banded morph, and I was able to get some of the classic pattern associated with this gene in the coil below the head. I plan to use this photo in my new business cards, on my website banner, and in a new updated kingsnake.com banner ad. I do not mean to come across like some kind of professional photographer, because I am not. In fact, when I look at this picture I see all kinds of things I wish I could have done better. I am just a regular guy trying to do my best and improve my picture taking. I hope that some of what I have shared here will give you ideas on how to improve your pictures as well.

This Smooth Earth Snake, Virginia valeriae, is a repeat offender. For the last several years it has been busted utilizing artificial cover! Most often found hiding beneath logs, leaf litter, or other debris Smooth Earth Snakes are fossorial (live underground) and give live birth to as many as 12-14 live young in the late summer.

A scar, blemish, missing tail tips and eyes can often serve as proof that the same individuals have set up shop and thrive for years under cover at study sites. This is another reason to take time to inspect and photograph even the smaller and most common species at your sites!

Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake Crotalus adamanteus
I travel to Florida with my family about every other year and only get to take one day to hunt snakes on each visit, so I am by no means an expert on the finer aspects of Florida snake hunting. Over the years I have been able to locate some really neat and even rare herps, but my favorite find of all time in Florida was this Collier county Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake.

When I discovered this snake crossing a road I was totally unprepared. All I had was a cheap little pocket camera. I was wearing tennis shoes like a true tourist. I did not even have a snake hook, and I had to resort to using a baby stroller to pose this snake for pictures. There were tourists taking pictures of me using the stroller to pose this snake! I got several pictures and I guess this was the best one. I know it is not the best pose and not so great of an EDB image, but for me it is GREAT! When I look at it I remember seeing that big fat beast from at least 200 yards away and stomping the gas so I could get to it before it escaped. The snake struck at me repeatedly and I can only imagine what I looked like with that baby stroller. The sun was bright, and I even remember how the air tasted when I look at the picture. Sometimes I am unable to get the kind of picture that I am after, but years later when I am at home looking over things I am always happy when I see images I got that may have not seemed so good at the time. Sometimes being able to relive the experience and the memories is a better reward than taking a killer picture. Keep this in mind as you are out in your travels, and just keep your cameras rolling!