Field Herp Forum

I've had a few good ones and heard quite a few better. You definitely win. Glad you came out of it with just the story and no injury. Haha - thanks. That being said, my dad (who spent 30 years working in zoos) had this interesting note: "I'd worry more about the bears than the leopard. Although cer...

Thanks, all of you have been really helpful!

Long talks with Yellowstone back country guides and rangers made me a believer of its effectiveness. http://www.backcountry.com/counter-assault-bear-deterrent-with-belt-holster-10.2oz?rr=t https://www.amazon.com/Udap-12HP-UDAP-Bear-Spray/dp/B001QGYH7Y http://www.bearspray.com/specification-chart/ b...

Great story, jonathan. One you can hold for years and years. I do wonder if you met Shere Khan instead, if it would have turned out differently? No tigers in this area. In the one place I've dealt with that's tiger-heavy, which happens to contain probably the most consistently man-eating tigers on ...

Not a great shot? That's a fantastic cougar shot.

Chaitanya wrote:Personally for me place where I herp on outskirts of my city, striped hyenas and leopards are threat and I have to watch out for those two animals constantly.

Do you herp alone at night in any bear/leopard territory? If not, what do you consider a minimum? What precautions do you take?

The technical "keeper" info is also pretty exceptional. It's pure Euro-style (big cages, naturalistic set-ups, natural feeding, close approximation of home-area temp & moisture cycles etc etc), not every American's cup of tea and certainly not the only way to succeed, but it accords closely with my...

I used to keep a good-sized adult leopard lizard and a good-sized adult desert iguana together in a large enclosure...I'm glad they never had these kind of issues with each other! Although when I tried to add my mojave fringe-toed lizard to the mix, the leopard lizard ran around with it like a dog w...

Cat sightings are few and far between for most people, I think. Mine are: Yeah, I can't imagine the luck of anyone who sees cats "a lot". (Though full-time field researchers doing their work at night probably get more chances than anyone.) Mine are: 4 bobcats. First was crossing a logging road at n...

Pigs can be pretty nasty to each other, all right. That's a weird looking wound, though. If it were done by another animal I'd expect it to be some kind of slash, but that just looks like a big, open and spreading sore. Maybe it started as a much smaller wound from daily life but then got infected?...

Your leopard cat with kittens story is awesome. The saddle-backed tamarin is great too. I like how we had so many overlaps. Bobcat, small-clawed otter, stink badger, and multiple tropical porcupine species on both of our lists. Quite coincidentally, within 2 weeks of posting this list I have to comp...

I just got far enough in the article to get to this quote: Consider the question “Are genetically modified crops more productive than conventional crops?” Some researchers prefer to answer this question by looking at field trials that allow variables like weather and soil type to be carefully contro...

I have yet to reach India, but I imagine the street markets have some interesting creatures for sale. Street herp'n, in addition to the above suggested wild locations. Not in any place I've ever been. That's SE Asia and China where you'll find that stuff. In India the predominantly Hindu/Muslim pop...

Great story, glad you are OK. Sounds like weird mix of mega fauna and dense human habitation. I have heard many old school stories of sloth bears as dangerous, looks like they are pretty common in that area. How do you find their temperament compared to North American black bears or grizzlies (if y...

I can tell you where not to go. :lol: As you've already figured out, somewhere in that Western Ghats stretch between Mumbai and Tamil Nadu is by far your best bet. There are great things I've heard about certain spots in the Northeast too, but I think you'd almost certainly have to go on an organize...

At the same time, protected from both the logic of the marketplace and the capriciousness of politics by the imperative of national defense This is a good point from the article. A problem is that in order to really "solve problems", science needs to be protected from the marketplace AND from burea...

note – I omitted a detail because I wanted the appearance of the leopard to be as sudden and surprising as it had been to me. But the night before, on a night-hike on a different trail about 4km from this spot, I had heard what sounded like a leopard roar from over 100m away. I stopped for a bit to ...

I head out at 8:15pm to herp a trail which I’d already scouted/herped from 4-7:30pm earlier in the day. Though the trailhead starts right on the edge of the mountain town I’d been exploring for two days, it gives a feeling of remoteness almost immediately. The next day I will hear that a foreign tou...

Fieldnotes wrote:Pretty neat observation—habitat shot looks cool too. Great place to explore during the summer. Herps include amphibians and they reach much higher than reptiles.

Yeah, I thought of that, but that habitat doesn't exactly look amphibian-friendly.

Fieldnotes wrote:hmmm, Mola mola comes to mind.

Yes, that immediately came to mind for me too, simply because I know they're in Monterey Bay and I know they're funny-looking. I don't actually know what their profile above the water looks like though.

Monterey Bay http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff45/Jonathan_Daehnke/IMG_2407-001_zpsjdmpywo8.jpg In black-and-white to creepify: http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff45/Jonathan_Daehnke/IMG_2407_zpslp2h9q23.jpg That's my aunt and uncle in the kayak. Mom took the picture. She claims she didn't even...

I could include stuff from my childhood before I got a camera (moose/bison/mink/red fox/black bear/grey whale/rocky mountain elk/beaver/grey fox), but decided to leave that out. Here's my list of the 10 mammal pictures I didn't get and most wish I had, from my adulthood: 10. Giant Flying Squirrel in...

I had no idea that SE Oregon had elevation like that! Yeah, it's obvious that there'd be some herps well above 6000 feet there.

That's probably going to be as high as anyone gets....but has anyone else seen equivalently high elevation herps in northern Oregon?

Yup, I'm pretty sure those are all Dunn's.


Your other picture in the album of the one on the mossy log is actually tougher for me...but that might just be the lighting.

I'm wondering what the highest elevation herp anyone has found or heard of in Oregon is? I don't know if this is a candidate or not, but my dad found an alligator lizard about 700 feet above timberline on Mt. Hood last week. 6300 ft: http://www.naherp.com/vouchers/264980-345524.jpg http://www.naherp...

I've seen at least 7 bears in the wild now (10 sightings but I think some of them were the same bear), but still have only gotten the pure black ones. Are the brown-colored Black Bears limited to certain regions? Other than a brief trip to Yellowstone with I was 10, I've yet to be in Grizzly territo...

Haha - the one time I heard a helicopter coming from a distance, I was on foot, so I just ducked out of sight so that they'd pass over without loitering around my herping area. Now I know I made a good call. My guess is that they originally stopped because you looked suspicious with your vehicle sto...

This was something I wrote for my Thai herping blog/field guide , so it's targeted towards a non-herper-but-herp-interested audience. (Also, I think it's formatted slightly better on my own blog) However, I thought I'd go ahead and share it here too. If anyone catches any errors in what I say about ...

Great post!


I've always wondered - are snake rescues involving spitting cobras significantly more difficult than other rescues?

Accepting the facts that 1) to do something - anything - creates winners and losers, and (this is more subtle but just as - maybe MORE - important) that 2) doing nothing accepts the status quo winners and losers , is an important step in maturity and honesty, I believe. For both practitioners and o...

Here are some of the examples that have been given: * Burning woody plant cover in wetlands to help eastern massassaugas also helped other herps * Ending grazing and doing some restoration at isolated springs helped Columbia Spotted Frogs and Relict Leopard Frogs * Removing non-native vegetation fro...

Thanks for the responses! I stayed quiet for a little bit just to take in the discussion. I want to say that a couple decades back when I was just a little 16-year-old, my Eagle Scout project plan was a "habitat restoration" project. I was going to go to a small local lake, clean up all the trash, b...

More than a decade ago when I was just a wee lad, I traveled through Mojave Desert National Preserve by myself in April. I remember exactly where I saw my lifer Desert Horned Lizard and my lifer Desert Tortoise. However, one memory messes with me. I remember stopping for some reason on the side of t...

Can anyone with experience in herping Yosemite PM me? That's something that's been on my bucket list for a long time, and I'm looking to finally plan it. I would love to see Mount Lleyl Salamanders, Yosemite Toads, Sierra Mountain Yellow-legged Frogs if possible, and any snakes or other interesting ...

I'm wondering what people's views on the idea of "habitat restoration" are. I'm not so concerned with negative examples as I'm hoping for any positive examples. (Or the simple and legitimate opinion that there are very few positive examples) The reason I ask is because I've seen habitat restoration ...

Please read up on Prof Denardo's (and others) work on Gila water physiology and see if you still hold the opinion that they are well adapted to deserts. They are actually supremely well-adapted (in terms of their sensitivity to water loss only) to seasonally monsoonal climates, preferably those wit...

3) If the evidence indicates the Gila Monster has been in existence for 100,000 years or perhaps into the millions of years, then the argument about the dire affects of climate change would seem to be tenuous It is my understanding that historically, the North Am. continent has undergone a series o...

I don't collect because I'm away from home too much to have that responsibility, and legal issues where I live. I also realized that the enjoyment I got over any one animal would wane over time, so it seemed pointless to have it just sitting in a cage in my place all the time - the best moment was t...

" to bring up the elephant in the room that NO ONE EVER wants to discuss with any seriousness, and that is the simple fact that there are too many human beings currently in existence on this planet and that this is the root cause of ALL of our problems today. We as a species operate in direct contr...

Government bureaucracies seem to exist in an entirely different social world that can sometimes be characterize as lacking common sense and rational thinking. See, that's the unnecessary and unproven ideological add-on that only does harm to all the good stuff you say. Where's the social world that...

And here we are, rolling the same egg across the table...back and forth, back and forth, with the same results...everyone keeps their own opinions. Is it any wonder i never have anything of substance to say anymore...it's a waste of time. 8-) Brian, I don't believe everyone does keep the same opini...

My time in Oregon this year was limited to a month in May, and it was an unusual month for me. I stayed almost entirely at low elevations and ran straight up the I-5 corridor from bottom to top, never once hitting the Coast Range and never once hitting the Gorge (though with some good time in NorCal...

Congrats on a well-done trip!

I noticed a conspicuous lack of lizard shots. Did you guys not see much besides whiptails and fencies?

I posted a list of thoughts composed by biologist Dean Ripa about his experience involving a new protection policy to be implemented. Below are his recommendation's to address the issues found in that policy. Nearly all of those suggestions sound quite good in a vacuum (a couple are a little whiny/...

In my previous post I included a statement from researcher and biologist Dean Ripa about his experience involving a new protection policy to be implemented. What happened when he asked to see the data surrounding that issue. The dishonesty he encountered on both the part of wildlife biologist and w...

It is unlikely that agency biologists possess much, if any knowledge about the species of herps they propose for listing a protected status. So they are not using their own opinions. Instead, agency biologists have made listing decisions based on the opinions of other individuals and without any su...

Jonathon, You are correct in that I likely made a poor choice with respect to the example of owl caper. Sorry for that. I understood the basic reasoning behind the killing of Barred Owl and I am well aware that such killing of the Barred Owls will have no overall negative affect on that species. My...

It is my view that the field of conservation has now been hijacked by individuals that I would term as ‘alarmists’. There has been a ‘jump on the bandwagon’ type situations in the conservation movement that I do not believe was present until after the ESA had really taken hold in this country. As w...

Jonathon, From your first paragraph, I get the impression you consider it to be unrealistic for myself and the public to expect state wildlife agencies to assess and manage all non-game species in a professional manner. That is, the public should expect and accept that such wildlife agencies will u...

Jimi, I understand and agree with many points you have made, such as it is far better to try and ‘work with’ rather than to ‘antagonize’. As sound as your advice may be, and despite I believe you understand the problem I have identified, your advice sort of sidesteps the real problem. That is, afte...