It is always cause for comment when with the advent of warm nights the Mediterranean geckos, Hemidactylus turcicus, are drawn from their places of winter seclusion to forage on our house and sheds.



During some springs only one or two geckos initially appear; other years the lizards appear en masse, with every illuminated window disclosing one or more newly emerged foraging gecko. On those nights the life of every light-drawn small moth or beetle is in precarious straits. Patti and I sit and marvel at their adroitness on windows and walls, mostly outside, but occasionally finding their way through a nook or cranny yet unknown to us, or an open door to visit temporarily indoors.

In bygone years the Mediterranean gecko (also referred to as the Turkish gecko) was an abundant exotic that was distributed widely over much of the Florida mainland from the Keys northward to Tampa Bay and Vero Beach. It was more locally distributed in and beyond north Florida. Today it may be encountered in protected areas across the southern USA and is slowly expanding current ranges northward. But while expanding north of Florida, it had run into serious competition in South Florida, first from the parthenogenetic Indo-Pacific House gecko and now from the larger and seemingly more prolific Amerafrican House gecko.

There are on the Lower Keys of Florida three species of tiny geckos of the genus Sphaerodactylus. Two of these, the Ashy and the Ocellated Geckos, are considered established alien species. The third, the Reef Gecko, is thought to be a native form.

Jake and I had driven to the Lower Keys (this term means south of the 7 Mile Bridge) for an entirely different reason, but since we had a bit of spare time, when Jake said he’d like to find a hatchling Ashy Gecko a quick look seemed to mesh well with our later plans. Jake had already found numerous examples of the plain-colored adult Ashys, but the beautifully colored hatchlings had managed to evade his efforts.



Ashy geckos are secretive but common denizens of many microhabitats in the Keys. The 2-and-a-half inch long lizards may be found in the boots of palm trees, beneath all manner of surface debris, under garden rocks, in houses and sheds, and between the layers of fallen leaves.

It was the latter habitat that we decided to try. Within minutes, that we were in the right habitat for adult Ashy Geckos was quickly evident. With them we found snails, scorpions, Amerafrican house geckos, and an abundance of tiny food insects.

Although I had found several hatchlings on earlier trips, it took more than a half an hour of looking before Jake found the first and only hatchling seen on this effort. It was beneath a few fallen leaves at the very edge of a busy trail. Success!

Departure day had caught up with us, and departure time was approaching rapidly. We had a couple of hours left until checkout, so we decided to take one more stroll to a couple of South Bimini locales.

Destination, the vicinity of a well that actually held a little water.

We had little hope of completing our “Herps found on Bimini” checklist, but there was a chance of finding one or two additional taxa. And that was exactly what we accomplished.



More greenhouse frogs, Eleutherodactylus planirostris, an adult Cuban treefrog, Osteopilus septentrionalis, dozens of Cuban treefrog tadpoles, and many hermit crabs were added to our lists.

We began the next morning of our Bimini reunion by seeking additional Bimini Green Anoles.

We hoped, but failed, to photograph a displaying male. Bimini curlytails were already out sunning on sidewalks and garden walls. The cross-channel ferry to the South Island was nearing. It was our plan to return to the airport and work our way southward to the tip of the island, searching for twig (also called ghost) anoles, geckos and whatever else we could find.



As it turned out the twig anoles, Anolis angusticeps oligaspis, were rather easily found as they thermoregulated in the morning sunshine at the tips of slender, sparsely leafed, twigs.

My yard in Ft. Myers, FL, was well-populated with Green Anoles, Anolis carolinensis. Although most males that I saw had dewlaps of bright pinkish red, dewlaps that I then referred to as “normal” a small percentage had dewlaps of greenish-white, gray, grayish green, or (I suspected) when a normal and a gray interbred the dewlap would be pale pink broadly edged with gray or white.



But if the dewlap wasn’t normal then the lizards were referred to as “abnormals.” But truthfully, I never thought too much about the dewlap color. I just enjoyed the lizards for what they were.

Then in 1991 the unthinkable happened. In the Bulletin of the Maryland Herpetological Society, Thomas Vance elevated these gray throats to subspecies status and dubbed them Anolis carolinensis seminolus.

I was perplexed by this listing then and remain so today, for as I understood the subspecies concept (and I am a believer in subspecies), two subspecies could not populate the self same niche, and to qualify as a subspecies 75 percent of a population must display the stated characteristics.

Although Jake and I both live in Florida and thought that we were rather used to the heat of summer, we both found the lack of available shade on Bimini a bit disconcerting. True, there was always the dense scrubby woodlands, but these were so amply packed with poisonwood (to which we are both very allergic) that neither of us chose to spend much time therein. The lack of transportation on South Bimini was also taking its toll. Departure time was drawing ever nearer and we were still nine taxa short of our goal.

Then came a bit of good luck. Asked by a store owner what we were doing on South Bimini, we explained that we were photographing reptiles but weren’t having the best of luck.

His response was “Look up Jack and Jill (fictitious names as I don’t know whether they would choose to be identified). They know all about the reptiles here.” So that afternoon we did just that. Not only did these kind folks allow us to photo a Bimini Boa, Epicrates striatus fosteri, that was temporarily in their keeping, but they provided a few locales for us to check that evening.



So after supper, as darkness enveloped us and the BSDs (blood-sucking dipterids in the forms of mosquitos and no-see-ums) came out to play, we were back on South Bimini.

Of the four anole species on Bimini, the twig or ghost anole is the most diverse and the most difficult to find.

This attenuate brownish gray, sharp-nosed, anole is very arboreal and prefers to move slowly and stealthily. The male’s dewlap is a pale yellowish peach and does not seem to be distended as readily as the dewlaps of most species. If approached, the twig anole will quietly and slowly sidle around the branch on which it is resting, adroitly keeping the branch between itself and the observer. The grayish coloration and lineate pattern blend so well with the bark of the trees on which this anole lives that the lizard is very easily overlooked.



In 1948, based on cranial scalation and lamellae count, Jim Oliver thought the Bimini twig anoles sufficiently distinct from those on Cuba and elsewhere in the Bahamas to assign them their own subspecies. He named them Anolis angusticeps chickcharnyi, the subspecific name being based on a mythical being -- a ghost, if you will, or perhaps a goblin -- that supposedly appeared on Andros Island.

Our plan was to take a taxi to the South Bimini Airport and walk the several miles back to the ferry slip when we wished to return to the hotel. The taxi ride was fine, the walk back was horrid.

Near the airport we encountered numbers of Bimini Whiptails, Ameiva auberi richmondi. I recalled that the last time I had visited the island I had been able to run this speedy, alert, taxon down. This time though? Not a chance. Had something to do with advancing age — mine, not the lizards.

Two and a half hours after departing Miami, the ferry gently nudges the dock on North Bimini. This was Jake Scott’s first trip and the first time I had visited since 1973—40 years prior. On that earlier venture I had found every one of the 16 species of reptiles and amphibians (with the establishing of the Amerafrican House Gecko there are now 17 taxa) in less than a day of looking. I couldn’t help but wondering what changes had been wrought in the ensuing four decades.

Disembarking, clearing customs and immigration, and checking into the hotel took less than a half an hour. Even before we had cleared customs we had seen the first lizard species, the Bimini Curly-tail, Leiocephalus carinatus coryi.

While perusing Facebook a few days ago, an entry on the page of the Turtle Hospital at Marathon, FL, caught my eye. I first glanced at it then read it again:

This cute little guy was washed ashore and found floating in a bed of Sargassum weed inside a marina at The Sea Breeze Trailer Park in Islamorada. Because there was a large saltwater crocodile in the marina too the turtle was netted and turned over to the Turtle Hospital for rehabilitation. At just over 10cm long, Crush qualifies as juvenile Hawksbill and is probably less than a year old.

Hawksbill researcher Larry Wood had told me that although they were rare on the mainland, only a few miles to the east of Palm Beach, amidst the sargassum, hawksbills gathered and grew, probably for years, before dispersing. Each year some would disperse and a new cohort would appear.

Bette Zirklebeck, the Turtle Hospital manager, thought “it was likely that strong currents pushed this turtle (dubbed Crush) the wrong way and he floated in to shore.” Zirklebeck continued “Crush appears to be in pretty good shape and staff plans to give him plenty of squid bits and make sure behavior is normal before his release in just a week or two!”

Prior to the advent of fancy plastics, hawksbills were hunted for their shells and the intricately colored carapacial scutes were made into fancy jewelry and glasses frames. Hawksbills are an endangered turtle species and are rigidly protected over most of their wide range.

We wish Crush a lifetime of good luck.

(More photos under the jump!)

This “little project,” or more accurately long term fact-finding mission, started out years ago after several seasons of seeing my diamond pythons breed but not having my females ovulate. Why was this happening? What was I doing incorrectly? Well, I still don’t have the answer to these two questions, but while I was meditating on them I started the current project.

Diamonds are the southeastern most race of carpet pythons or, more correctly, carpets are more northerly and westerly races of the diamond python. It is well documented that diamond pythons at the northerly end of their range intergrade with the southernmost coastal carpet pythons. And, unlike the difficult diamond pythons, the southern carpets are easily bred. How about the diamond-coastal intergrades? Time to find out.

Pure diamond male


So I enlisted the help of Will Bird, owner and cage slave to a wonderfully varied collection of herps at Extraordinary Ectotherms. Will bred diamond and carpet pythons of varying lineages. To give the project a head start I borrowed a couple of first generation diamond-carpet babies and we were on our way.

Female 75 percent pure diamond


The babies matured and were successfully bred to one of my full blooded diamond males. She laid a few eggs amd voila, I had babies that carried 75 percent diamond genes. They matured and were bred to another diamond male and this year I have hatchlings with 87.5 percent diamond genes.

Newly hatched 87.5 percent diamonds, 2013


If continued, when these babies mature, the project will produce snakes having 93.75 percent diamond genes followed next generation by babies that are 96.865 percent diamonds. I’m hoping that these higher percentage diamonds remain easily bred, and I know they will look like pure diamonds. Ease of breeding added to the beauty of the diamond python should interest many hobbyists, old and new alike.

I derive great pleasure from feeding wild birds. The squirrel-proof hanging feeder has been in the same place in a tall crepe myrtle shrub outside my office window for years, and many common and a few uncommon birds visit it daily or occasionally.

One day, a couple of years ago, I swiveled my chair to watch the feeder, wondered why there was no bird activity, and saw that the feeder had a second watcher. Coiled in a tree crotch within easy striking distance of the feeder was a 30 inch long yellow rat snake, Pantherophis obsoletus quadrivittatus. I guess he was hoping for a bird dinner but the sharp-eyed avians had spotted the snake and temporarily boycotted the feeder.



Well, my freezer is never without a couple hundred mice, so I chose and thawed one of appropriate size, grabbed some forceps and mouse and visited the snake-shrub. Although I moved slowly, as I neared the shrub the snake began flickering its tongue and drew its head back into its coils.

With each passing year, as the various exporting countries close or open their seasons and/or shipping quotas the herps we see in the pet trade change. Availability of some changes from abundance to rarity, of others from rarity to abundance.

Two examples are the Colombian horned frog, Ceratophrys calcarata, and wild caught examples of the coveted red-tailed boa, Boa constrictor constrictor.



The former, once available in the thousands each breeding season, have not been available for decades and likewise for the boa, although far fewer numbers were involved.



Those among us who are keepers (yes, I am one) owe each and every animal, be their cost mere pennies or thousands of dollars, the best of conditions and care. Research each species before acquisition, and then acquire only those that you can care for adequately and with relative ease.

The late spring sun shown brightly and the woodlands were verdant with newly greened leaves. Crows cawed over head and a broad-winged hawk circled lazily. I was clambering over some sizable tumbled boulders. To my left was a roller coaster that, come sundown, would be zipping boisterous, screaming, throngs up and down inclines that I didn’t even want to imagine and around hairpin curves that I wanted to think about even less.

To my right the boulder field eased and the greenery encroached tightly. I had been told that here, amidst the very rocks I was now traversing, northern copperheads, Agkistrodon contortrix mokasen, denned, foraged, bred, and underwent their quiet lives unseen and unsuspected by the amusement park employees and attendees.



I wasn’t sure that I believed this, for although I knew the rocks to be home to garter snakes and black racers, I was one of the many who never had suspected the presence of a pit viper of any kind. And so far on this glorious spring day my total for snakes seen was zero.

I had made my way, slowly and searchingly, across the expanse of boulders and was about to carefully make the return. In preparation I stepped out into the woodland, and stood for a moment listening to the sounds of the wild. Birds on their spring migration were cheeping, chirping, and lisping overhead. I listened for a few minutes, then turned to begin my return.

Ahead of me, among hundreds of others, was a flat, foliage surrounded, sun-drenched, rock. And what was that spot of orange on it? I looked more closely. Neonate copperhead.



The tales were true, and this day would live forever in memory.

For a little over two years in the 1970s, Patti and I left Florida and spent three years in Massachusetts. During that time the venerable Massachusetts Herpetological Society was active and well, and the monthly meetings were a joy to attend.

At the society meetings I met Tom Tyning, a herpetologist who is now a professor at Berkshire Community College but was at that time a stalwart employee of Massachusetts Audubon. Tom had a wonderful sense of humor, so I thought he was kidding me when he said his herpetological nemesis in MA was the eastern worm snake, Carphophis amoenus amoenus. What I found strange about that statement was that Tom lived at the edge of a sandy, rolling, expanse of land that contained a thriving worm snake population. When I told him this, Tom’s response was something to the effect of a skeptical, “Oh, yeah, sure!”

So, a few days later, on a typically toasty summer afternoon, Tom and I met a couple of hundred feet from his back door, and began our search for fallen tree trunks, discarded newspapers and cardboard, all worm snake cover. Finding such cover was the work of only a minute.

Finding the first few worm snakes took only a few moments longer. Remembering the look of incredulity on Tom’s face has lasted a lifetime.

More photos under the jump.

Using the harsh cries of red-shouldered hawks, the excited cawing of crows, and the strident vocalizations of bluejays as an excuse to take a break from yard work, Patti and I walked across the street to see what was causing the avian uproar.

The birds were all gathered on the uppermost limbs of a big live oak. Responding to their distress calls, more birds were winging our way. The tree was tall and fully leafed. Although the birds, hopping and flying from limb to treetop limb, might have had a great view, we needed binoculars.

Binocs were found and Patti was the first to make out a sinuous shape -- a snake shape -- amidst the leaves of a slender outermost branch.

It was a yellow rat snake, Pantherophis obsoletus quadrivittatus, a big one, and the fact that it was being dive-bombed by a host of varied bird species seemed to bother it not at all. Eventually I snagged the binoculars and found the snake in the branches.



Birds screamed, dive-bombed, hopped about, retreated, and then began the ritual all over. The snake had coiled within a network of small diameter branches that the birds could neither land on nor penetrate while awing. After a half hour or so, as evening drew nigh, the avian horde decided they had better make nighttime preparations and all left.

Ten minutes after the hub-bub died down the snake began its descent. With the show now over and necks aching from craning upwards, we also returned to our temporarily forgotten yard work.

Yellow rat snakes are no stranger to our neighborhood. We usually see several a year and are led to many by the excited calls of birds. The snakes depicted here are of typical color and are from our backyard. The larger one could actually be the protagonist in this tale.

More photos after the jump...

“Toonk, toonk, toonk, toonk.”

During a warm downpour I stood on the back porch for a few minutes listening and reveling at the sound.

The hollow “toonks” of H. gratiosa, the barking treefrog, were unmistakable. It was the third year I had heard this small chorus of the southeast’s largest native treefrog while standing on my back porch. They called from a small retention pond in an apartment complex a bit under a half mile from us. Only two or three had been heard in the spring of 2011. The number had grown to six or seven last year. And this year it sounded as if it had doubled again.



In their color-changing abilities, by the way, barking treefrogs are hylid chameleons. The same frog may be any one of several shades of green at one moment and tan or brown a minute or two later. The spots may be lighter or darker than the body color and be entirely of one color or dark-edged ocelli. Barkers often voice occasional calls from the canopy, but when breeding often vocalize while floating amidst dense emergent vegetation.

We had experienced a warm winter and were having a cold spring in northcentral Florida. It was now the third week of April and the winter frogs, the various chorus frogs and peepers, not yet realizing that seasonal warming was finally upon us, were still calling from suitable habitats. The green treefrogs that usually call from the tiny rubber-bottomed pond in our yard had not yet announced their presence. Although the southern toads had been foraging in the yard for weeks they had gathered at the pond to call on only one very rainy night a week earlier.

Only a moment earlier I had been exchanging Facebook comments with more northerly friends who were experiencing another spring snowstorm. Now I stood listening to a hylid that, to me, truly signified the advent of spring’s warming. I decided to pull up a chair and enjoy sounds nature offered, the sighing breezes, the steadily falling rain, and the treefrog chorus, for a while longer.

More photos under the jump...

With Eugenio at the controls, the motor canoe “Mai Kai” nudged her way through emergent grasses in the shallow channel. If lucky, we’d be able to reach a few of the water lettuce beds that floated on the open waters of the interior coche (oxbow). We were already amidst some chorusing treefrogs, but it seemed probable that with the intermittent showers on this humid night, a cacophony of hylid voices would reverberate across the coche.



When we left camp, motor canoe full of chatting herpers, lightning was spearing a seemingly cloudless sky. But weather patterns in Amazonia are capricious, and distant cloud formations are often obscured by the riveredge trees. Storms can sneak up on you before you know there is actually one impending. And such it was on this night. The coche was only a few miles downriver, but in the 20 minutes it took us to reach it, the sparkling stars were obliterated by towering cumulus clouds and lightning activity had increased dramatically.

The nocturnal foray to Mayaruna Coche, often vegetation-clogged, sometimes impassable, is always a highlight. This night we were doubly lucky. Not only had the leading edge of the storm moved quickly eastward, taking with it the lightning but leaving us with a gentle rain, but secondly we were actually able to break through the vegetation and access the lettuce beds.

Within minutes we were nearly overwhelmed by the volume of treefrog voices. While most of the vocalizations were produced by tiny clown treefrog complex species and spotted treefrogs, as we nosed the canoe into the water lettuce the vocalizations of three species of hatchet-faced treefrogs could be heard. I had played up the beauty of the greater hatchet-faced treefrog, Sphaenorhynchos lacteus, so greatly that it would be nearly impossible to return to camp without seeing the species. And see it we did, by the dozens and dozens. It was another successful coche visit.

More photos under the jump...

I had never thought much about the color gray. I considered it a drab color, a color that I had come to associate with a few of the species that were not then very high on my herp “Iwannasee” list. But then I met a skink and I realized that beauty truly was in the eyes of the beholder, for not only was that skink gray, it was pretty. In fact, I thought it, with its orange highlights and smaller accents of fawn, to be one of the prettiest skinks I had until then encountered. And today, 50 years later, I still think this to be so.



Back in the 1960s when I first met this lizard, it was called the Algerian skink, Eumeces algeriensis. Today it is called the Berber skink (now the name “Algerian skink” is usually associated with the smaller Schneider’s skink, Novoeumeces schneideri) and like the Schneiders’ skink, the generic name is Novoeumeces. Small numbers of Berber skinks were imported between 1970 and 2000 but for the most part they have not been available and were but fond memories to those who had been lucky enough to actually see them in those earlier years.

I was lucky enough to have a few Berber skinks offered to me about 8 years ago. These heavy-bodied, foot long, omnivorous beauties are easy to maintain but have proven almost impossible to breed. They are known to be oviparous and like many skinks seem to be quite long-lived. Successfully breeding this terrestrial North African skink certainly remains a goal.

More photos under the jump...

Hobbyists have always had an interest in locality-specific corn snakes, Pantherophis guttatus guttatus. References to Miami phase, Okeetee phases, Florida Key phases, and others are commonplace in the hobby. But there are in Florida alone several other locales in which corn snakes, although variable to a degree, are of characteristic colors and patterns. One such is Levy County, a rather sparsely populated area located on Florida’s Gulf Coast west, and a bit south of Gainesville.

The corn snakes of that area are typically rather small, being adult at 30 to 40 inches in length. But what they may lack in size they make up for with beauty.



On these pretty corn snakes, the dorsal and lateral ground color is usually a cinnamon-buff. The rich orange-red dorsal saddles are well spaced, edged anteriorly and posteriorly with black markings about a half a scale wide, and are usually about as wide as the areas of ground color that separates them. The orange-red lateral spots are small and usually edged with only one to four half black scales. The spearpoint atop the head is bright orange-red and may or may not be partially edged with black. The belly is white and checkered with pale orange, hazy black, or both.

If you think this description sounds pretty in print, you should see one of these corn snakes in the long red rays of the setting sun as it moves across an open patch of sandy soil or is surprised on a dirt or tarmac road. Such a sighting is nearly unforgettable.

More photos under the jump...

In January of 2013, Patti and I were in Amazonian Peru with about 15 other herpers. We had spent five days on Project Amazon’s Madre Selva Biological Preserve on the Rio Orosa, and had just moved back upriver to their Santa Cruz Forest Preserve.

Since our last visit, a lazy creek I remember as barely flowing had been dammed and had flowed sufficiently to form a several acre pond in a low-lying clearcut before trickling over the dam to reenter the dense secondary forest. The pond, now two years old, had provided new habitat for spectacled caiman, fish, and in banana trees along the banks, for Bob; for many Bobs, in fact.



Bob, a treefrog, had been named by our gang for his call, “Bob”—not Robert, not Bobby, just plain old Bob, spoken in a guttural croak. Big, angular, with actions and reactions relatively slow, Bob and his brethren sat, usually one to a banana tree, on the leaf stems about waist to head high. Bob was forest green dorsally, grayish to buff ventrally, and laterally had a jagged line of dark rimmed light spots separating the dorsal and ventral colors.

Bob was (and is) a giant monkey frog, Phyllomedusa bicolor. Among the largest of his genus Bob was about 4 ½ inches svl (snout-vent length), had huge parotoid glands and when he moved he as often moved in a deliberate hand over hand fashion as by jumping.

Every night at dusk, Bob (all the Bobs, in fact) emerged from the axil(s) of the banana tree(s) to sit boldly on the stem(s) and call loudly into the night. That this seemingly harsh and unwaveringly repetitious call has been successful in bringing females to the various calling sites was amply displayed by the vast number of tadpoles in all stages of development that swam in the shallows of the pond.

The Bobs it seems, and the Bobettes, have found new homes. Long live them all!

More photos under the jump...

Most hobbyists have heard about Okeetee and Miami Corn Snakes, Pantherophis guttatus guttatus, but in Florida there are a few other locales that are home to rather distinctive corn snakes.

Like “Okeetee,” actually an area much greater than just the hunt club from which the name was taken, and Miami (again a larger area), Palm Beach and the Everglades are homes to corn snakes that, although somewhat variable, are often identifiable by appearance to locale.

Let’s take a look at the Everglades phase, a corn snake that is often found right in mangrove habitat at the southernmost tip of the Florida mainland.

Usually only 2 ½ to 3 feet in length, the dorsum bears bright red saddles that are heavily outlined in black and separated by a pretty beige ground color. The sides, predominantly yellow-buff to beige, bear small black spots that may or may not have a red center. The belly is typically “corn snake checkered” but often has a hazy appearance.

Although not uncommon, this is a corn snake phase that is rather seldom seen. But if you’re all the way down in Miami-Dade County looking for the coveted maroon on pearl gray corns there, you might as well continue southward to Monroe County and find yourself a pretty Everglades phase.

More photos under the jump...

Gordy Johnston and I began our Massachusetts-to-Florida jaunts in the mid-1950s. Like many other herpers who we knew, our principal interest was in the constricting snakes (the lampropeltine species), but we were also very fond of the big, bellicose somber, green water snakes that were to be found foraging and basking in and along the borrow canal* that paralleled the old Tamiami Trail. Although the green water snakes were the dominant species, Florida water snakes and eastern mud snakes were also commonly encountered.

The term “green” can impart many visions, often erroneous, to those of us familiar with the vivid greens of green snakes and green lizards. However, when the term “green” is applied to Nerodia floridana, there are times when one must actually question the validity of the common name.

Young green water snakes are green: dingy olive green, but green. With growth this color may darken until on some aged examples the ground color is such a dark blackish-green that you must use your imagination to perceive the green at all. Over the years these dark colors are those I had come to associate with this species. Despite the fact that the field guides stated that green water snakes may also be brownish, that was a color I was not yet familiar with.

It was researcher Walt Meshaka who first mentioned the finding of brownish green water snakes in southern Florida to me. And, he continued, he had seen red ones also.

Red? A green water snake clad in scales of red? That thought had never entered my mind. But it was because of that conversation that my search for a red green water snake began and continued until a few years ago when, lo!, on a herping trip to the southern peninsula I found both brownish examples and one red one as well. Success was sweet!

And I can unequivocally state that the finding of the latter has done much to change my perception of the Florida green water snake. Green can be beautiful, especially when it is red.



More photos under the jump...

Dusk had long fallen, bats were erratically flitting low over the water, and a moonless night was already enveloping the little lake in Springfield, Massachusetts, where I had been harassing a population of eastern painted turtles for several hours. I had decided it was time to head home for a late supper. Docking and securing the old wooden rowboat I was using required the use of a flashlight, its batteries so used that the beam hardly showed.

As the boat nudged the dock and I grabbed the tie-rope I glanced down into the shallow water just in time to see a smoothly oval “stone” scuttling across the plant-free bottom. And then the flashlight dieWhat had I seen?

d.

I grabbed my bike and quickly rode the half mile home, hoping as I rode that I had a couple of replacement batteries and that I wouldn’t have to delay my return to the pond for supper. I lucked out. Supper was waiting, a set of new batteries was found, and a few minutes later I was on my way back to the lake.

Almost sooner than it takes to tell this tale I was back on the dock, sweeping the sandy lake bottom with my flashlight beam. Within seconds I had locked onto one of the moving stones. Little and black, I could now see a pointed nose on one end and a stubby tail on the other.



Between these were the little black legs that propelled the creature in bursts of speed between which it foraged agilely and avidly on the bottom. A soggy piece of bread discarded by a fisherman, a broken half of worm, a portion of a dead shiner—as I watched, all proved grist for the mill of this little turtle—a common musk turtle, Sternotherus odoratus, aka the Stinkpot.



I was soon soaked to the skin but before returning home that night I had seen and inspected more than half dozen. It was an educational introduction to a species I had never even imagined dwelt in our area.

I awakened to a hard March rain heralded by blustery but warm southern breezes. The snow that had fallen the previous day had melted and the rain had already made noticeable inroads on the crusted layer that lay beneath. Would this rainy night, I wondered, be the night — the night the spotted salamanders emerged from brumation and accessed their breeding ponds?



A quick check of the proposed forecast showed we were experiencing a late winter warm front, slow moving, almost stalled, and replete with rain. And that rain was supposed to fall all day, terminating in the early evening. The next day would probably be cold again.



At dusk, the rain was still falling as Patti and I carefully made our way, across ground still slippery with icy patches, to a well-known spotted salamander breeding pond.

As we neared the pond, our lights illuminated the wriggling form of a salamander as it emerged from cover in the woodland and approached the icy rim. It then crossed the ice to enter the open water beyond. A single spring peeper began calling. Then another salamander was seen, and another.



Although the rain was now nearly stopped and the night was cooling, that night definitely was the night. Despite the calendar date, the spotted salamanders had declared that spring was officially here.

The road surface was one hundred twenty six degrees. That wasn’t too surprising, for although it was the already 3 weeks into October, it had been sunny all day and, after all, this was north central Florida.

What did surprise Mike Manfredi and me more than a little was the fact that a big, gravid, female Canebrake Rattlesnake, Crotalus horridus atricaudatus (today these are often referred to as Timber Rattlesnakes with the subspecies no longer being recognized), was quietly lying stretched on the blistering hot pavement…and that two people in a car parked on the opposite side of road were watching her intently.



As I stopped by the idling snake, I looked more closely at the folks in the parked car and saw that the driver had a handgun aimed at the big rattler. Mike and I spoke, informing them that we would remove the snake and proceeded, to their obvious dismay, to do just that. Mike stayed by the snake while I pulled the car from the road and took a snakehook and a large heavy-duty locking trashcan from the car. Laying the trashcan on its side directly in front of the snake, I gave her a gentle prod on the tail and grinned happily at the people in the car (who had now taken the gun from view and were staring at Mike and me in unfettered incredulity) as she moved slowly into the shady receptacle.

The can was upturned, lidded, and as we prepared to leave, the watchers inquired about the pending fate of the rattler. We explained that she would be photographed and then released on the forest property that surrounded us. I thanked the driver for not shooting the snake and was told he, not wanting to put a hole in the pavement, would have shot her had she moved onto the shoulder.

Lucky snake. Lucky us.

I looked apprehensively at the cave entrance. It was not particularly large, but with the help of gravity would be easily negotiated. But beyond the entrance I would have to enter an unknown. OK. Despite misgivings, I’d try.



Beyond the entrance a jumble of boulders was the next obstacle. They were a bit more difficult for me. Jake had no trouble whatever. Then it was clear walking for about 15 feet before hitting a mud bank that was so slick that even on the level I could barely stand. But the level didn’t count because to access the stream in which we were interested it would be necessary to descend 35 to 40 feet down a mud face that was smoothly rounded and if I had thought the level area was slippery the next day I was to learn that the decline was about 10 times moreso, and that once started there was no returning!

While I pondered my sanity, Jake had done the descent, and, even more importantly (and from my vantage point seemingly improbably), had managed the ascent as well.

So I knew it could be done. I just didn’t know if I could do it. But with Jake’s help, gravity (which I could have done well without), artificial hand and footholds, and sliding on my butt and belly like a stranded elephant seal I accessed the crystal clear stream. It was beautiful. The first creatures seen were Cave Spring Crayfish, Cambarus tenebrosus, and Prickly Cave Crayfish, Cambarus hamulatus, the former pigmented, the latter ghostly white. Both were abundant.

As we waded slowly into the bowels of Mother Earth I wondered whether we would be lucky enough to see the salamander that had drawn us there, the Pale Salamander, Gyrinophilus p. palleucus. In we went, around a couple of curves, and suddenly the stream became a deep pool. There, Jake, still in the lead, saw the first Pale Salamander and then a second one. In the deep water, neither was photographable. But a few hundred feet beyond the pool, nearly at the end of the cave, I found a Pale Salamander beneath a flat submerged rock. This one, about 5 inches long, was in shallow water and easily photographed. Success!

The Everglades (aka the Orange) Rat Snake is probably the most controversial rat snake of all times. Two questions may be asked: 1) Does the Everglades Rat Snake exist today and 2) Did the Everglades Rat Snake ever exist?



I can only speculate on question number one. My answer to that is “perhaps.” But my answer to question number two is an unequivocal “yes.” Yes, until the human intervention in the sheet water flow from the Kissimmee Prairie to the Everglades, until sod farms, sugarcane, and peanut farms replaced the vast expanses of waving sawgrass and scattered hammocks, this most beautiful (if you like orange) of the eastern rat snakes not only existed, but was abundant.

But with this having been said, if you subscribe to the genetic theories (many of which are themselves controversial, even faulty) that are sweeping across the herpetological world right now, the Everglades rat snake never did exist. It was at best a localized color phase of the black (eastern) rat snake and is now known as Pantherophis alleghaniensis.

What is (or was) an Everglades rat snake?

This Florida snake, described by Wilfred T. Neill in 1949 as Elaphe obsoleta rossalleni, was a rich orange both above and below. The four stripes were variably visible but not well defined. Secondary characteristics included a yellow-orange to orange chin (a little white may be present along the mental groove) and throat, deep orange eyes and a red tongue -- not black, not even red and black (the latter is an intergrade characteristic), just a plain solid red. Like others of this complex, the Everglades Rat Snake attained a length of 5 to 6-plus feet.

Even when I first visited Florida in the 1950s, the Everglades were no longer pristine, but Everglades Rat Snakes were abundant. US highway 27, then a narrow 2-lane roadway, was still closely edged along its western border with a broad, flowing, sawgrass prairie. Along the eastern edge of US 27 was a line of huge introduced Australian pines, backed by what was then proving to be a very effective drainage canal. But the adverse modifications of the natural hydrology was still new enough that yellow rat snakes (then Elaphe obsoleta quadrivittata) of the dryer uplands had not yet genetically swamped the more localized, much oranger, and common, Everglades Rat Snake.

As the years passed, wet prairie along US 27’s west side was drained and replaced by sugarcane plantations and sodfields. Following the ever expanding dryness the yellow rats swept in from all four compass points and intergraded with the beautiful orange rat snakes of the Lake Okeechobee region. Today, even the occasional pretty orange rat snake found by hobbyists usually has sufficient phenotypic abnormality to be readily identified as an intergrade.

So, do Everglades rat snakes persist? Phenotypically, perhaps, but very rarely, and genetically probably not. So overwhelming are the hidden yellow rat snake genes that even the best of today’s Everglades rats seldom breed true.

Sadly, it seems that the hobbyists of today, identifying the rat snakes they find primarily by location and only secondarily by appearance, are not easily able to appreciate the true beauty of the Everglades Rat Snakes of yesteryear. Human intervention has not been kind to this colorful and one time plentiful snake.

More photos under the jump...

Spotted Turtle Mid-March 2013, Somewhere on the Southeastern Coastal Plain.

It was only a flooded roadside ditch and, as roadside ditches go, although lengthy, not even a very big one at that. At its widest it was perhaps 6 feet, and maybe 3 feet at its deepest. The water, clear and very slowly flowing, had been well-chilled by the just ending winter, and was still very cold. The firm bottom was covered with up to a foot of decomposing leaves and the ditch, itself, was spanned in many places by sizable fallen limbs and trunks.

Although the records were 25 or more years old, the ditch—all 10 miles of it—was a verified locale for the Many-lined Salamander, a species that a friend and I wished to photograph. And it was the hope of finding these that had drawn us to the locale. We accomplished this at our first stop but decided to spend another hour slowly driving the entire length. Within minutes we were glad for that decision. And within those same minutes the emphasis had changed from caudatans to chelonians.

The first turtles that caught our attention were several adult red-eared sliders that were assuming basking positions on a large diameter sun-drenched pine log. As we drove by Kenny exclaimed “There’s an eastern painted turtle with them.” But the moment I slowed to scan the group more carefully the entire lot cascaded into the water and submerged. There were more sliders on the next log. On the third log were a slider or two and a couple of huge, very dark cooters. With no carapacial markings visible on any of the cooters seen on the drive, coupled with extreme wariness, their identification remains a mystery. They could have been either or both of the two species that occur in the region, river cooters, unlikely in these quiet waters, or, more likely, Florida cooters, a turtle of quiet ponds, ditches, and canals.

The next couple of logs were vacant. Then Kenny said, "Spotted!" Let’s see now—did that mean he had spotted another turtle or that he had seen a Spotted Turtle, Clemmys guttata? He clarified: Spotted Turtle. About that time we approached another log and this time I needed no clarification—there were four Spotteds aboard. Fantastic. We had known the species to be in the area but hadn’t even thought about them in this locale.

And so it went for the entire length of the ditch. Wherever there was water (the ditch had dried in some areas near the distal end) both on the spanning logs and on the banks, we saw Spotted Turtles. The total for the day was about 40. Most were adults, but a few 2-inchers were also seen. Add to the turtles already mentioned a very large adult common snapping turtle seen in a deeper section of the ditch, and you will see that it had definitely become a chelonian kind of day.

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Black-shouldered Treefrog Jan 2013; Madre Selva Biological Preserve, Rio Orosa, Dpto. Loreto, Peru.

Well, darn, I exclaimed. I know what this treefrog is. It’s one I’ve been looking for more than 15 years. It’s the Black-shouldered Treefrog, Trachycephalus (formerly Phrynohyas) coriacea!

My exclamation was so loud and unexpected that all other members of the herp photography tour stopped and looked curiously at me. Many were snake enthusiasts and could not really understand this excitement over a treefrog that was barely 1½” snout-vent length. But a few were amphibian enthusiasts and well understood my delight.

I had just sat looking at the frog’s rose colored sides and brown back for nearly a half an hour before the realization hit me. I had known I had seen the frog before but I simply couldn’t remember where or when -— warm brown dorsum, rose sides. Why did it look so familiar?

And then, just as I was about to release it into the forest, the frog turned its head slightly and in so doing lifted a heavy tympanal skin fold to reveal a large black spot shoulder spot it had been concealing.

After that recognition clicked. I had seen this pretty rainforest anuran in Rodriguez and Duellman’s 1994 publication Guide to the Frogs of the Iquitos Region, Amazonian Peru. I was very familiar with the other two species in this genus, but had neither seen nor heard of the T. coriacae prior to that publication. Nor in the ensuing 17 years had I again seen it either in photos or life until now. And just because those drooping tympanal folds had so effectively concealed the identifying black shoulder spots on this half grown treefrog, I had nearly bypassed an opportunity to make its acquaintance.