Field Herp Forum

I've tagged and taken home a road-killed deer. It was "very" fresh though (as in it the back of the pickup within minutes of it's last heartbeat). A family member was once driving down a highway and definitely didn't see a large road-killed elk there, then saw one on the way back. Knowing it couldn'...

I prefer NAHERP because I felt it was set up best to include the most collaborators and have the best community feel to the project. Some of that has been lost now, but I still see it as the best option of those available.

I would think border patrol, even a bit further north than usual.

Turtles and frogs and garter snakes in lakes and marshes. Garter snakes and alligator lizards and racers in meadows/clearings/clearcuts. Stream salamanders and frogs in forested streams in the hills. In Portland, Google Earth will quickly lead you towards places where you can find stuff if you look ...

Quite late, I got a really nice follow-up message about the workshop. Hey, very very much overdue is this little HUGE Thank you! for the workshop on snakes you did with our crew in February. You are in best (and most memorable!) memory to them. "Jon approaches the forest differently", they told me. ...

Fieldnotes wrote:Amazing post, especially how creatively it is displayed.

Thank you!

I had almost forgotten about this post, until I found out that one of my DOR ID's was wrong and fixed it right now.

Woww. Its cool how clearly the snake is focused on going about its way and the photo has that same feel as the type you see with like, the ghosts of victorian twins superimposed in the background only its real, just a natural moment of an epic snake with human beings superimposed on its life and en...

https://s.aolcdn.com/hss/storage/midas/dd049f79e479bba15eba133a841f3b08/205114298/Screen+Shot+2017-03-31+at+10.37.50+AM.png When Bianca Dickinson's 2-year-old daughter was playing around in the driveway of their home on Monday, she thought she would snap a few cute photos of the child. Instead, she...

That's awesome. I wonder if this is the population that many of us know of and have been to before, or if it's a different naturally established one, or a reintroduction locale. If it's the spot I've been to before, I would be pleasantly surprised because that locale looked very borderline for the c...

I thought this was going to be about private property and land ownership.

I get that the desire to own animals is often misplaced, but the desire to own land is much more problematic for their welfare.

The pilot project, being funded by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, is also relatively cheap: just $68,888 for two tribesmen and two translators for two months. Armed only with tire irons to punch through dense burma reed and sharp limestone rock and trailed by biologists, the...

Something similar, on a much smaller scale, happened in my own room once when I was a kid. I had recently hatched a clutch of six corn snakes. Four of the babies were doing quite well, one was deformed and was pretty unlikely to make it, one was runted and I doubted it would make it either. I also h...

I guess my narrow focus was lost on you Kelly. I seriously doubt you have been approached to buy illegally obtained California Mountain Kingsnakes and told that they came from Oregon as a selling point. You are right though about some turtles, tortoises, and egg layers that produce large clutches. ...

Hunter–gatherers and other primates as prey, predators, and competitors of snakes Thomas N. Headlanda,1 and Harry W. Greeneb,1 25% of Philippine Agta Negritos men had been attacked by pythons. Snake attacks were a part of life for those people. Perhaps our fear and fascination with giant man eating...

I appreciate this discussion and the thorough documentation Jeremy provided. Summarizing the photos and accounts in one place is much appreciated. Ernie's predictable appearance and personal attacks on scientists aside, I thought we'd have more discussion of the Headland and Greene PNAS paper. 25% ...

Jonathan, do you know how far out in the Bay they were, and where they canoed out from, ie Santa Cruz, Monterey, or Moss Landing? My guess is the fin is the foreflipper of a California Sea Lion, and the spots are bits of water. I think the seal lion is doing a corkscrew dive, checking out the canoe...

Actually after several tries, did manage to get the lat long in, but the last straw was of all things humidity. Tried all kinds of combos, finally just gave up, it was a long day of herping, and just lost patience The humidity field is completely optional, and in my mind unnecessary. You can just l...

Unfortunately i tried to enter data, and it kept telling me to enter it in certain formats, i tried and it kept rejecting it, saying it wasn't entered right, after several tries i gave up frustrated. If data needs to be formatted, the program on the site should convert it automatically, a shame tha...

Nice insights! Perhaps we finally have a good candidate?

Short trip to Manila produced Yellow-vented Bulbul, Spotted Wood Kingfisher, Blue-eared Kingfisher, and a couple Red-crested Malkoha

Also saw a francolin/partridge of some sort and a nightjar of some sort that both would have been lifers if I’d been able to ID them.

DanW wrote:You should contact Rafe Brown at KU, he has done extensive work in the Philippines. https://biodiversity.ku.edu/herpetology

Dan

Thanks a ton Dan. Rafe was in the field, but Luke Welton of KU provided the exact help that I needed.

A few months ago someone got word that I'd be in Manila for a conference (my first time outside India in 1.5 years) and asked if I'd be willing to lead a community snake workshop in their area. The people extending the invitation were a small and quite young network of Christian organic farms and tr...

Another is a spot in west Texas where you can sit for hours in the car watching the interactions of Racerunners. This includes foraging, territorial spats, and mating (which is more like rape in their world.) That was a good mention. I remember a similar experience of watching Cozumel Whiptails on ...

I've had a number of people, I think Flaxington and Trageser specifically, recommend the seldom-practiced technique of simply sitting still and seeing what herps (or other denizens of nature) show up. And I nearly never have the patience for it, nor am I certain that they do. But every once in a whi...

Thank you both!

I've emailed Rafe - hopefully he can get back to me quickly.

I happen to be passing through Manila briefly soon, and a friend has asked me if I could give a little workshop/presentation on snakes in a local community. Apparently, the community is made up of many people who were relocated to this forest/farming area from the city, and they’re not particularly ...

Nice post

Picture from my dad. I have my guess, but I want to get other opinions before I put it in the database.

I had a lot of professors who would have probably joined a suicide cult if Feynman led it. He was legendary in physics circles, and for good reason. A major issue I had with him, though, is that he frequently degraded the "philosophy of science", even though he (unintentionally?) spoke out on princi...

My first stop was Jaipur where my wife had a workshop to attend. Though I didn't get the chance to herp, even our short excursion to the city lake resulted in a chance encounter with this fantastic softshell turtle: http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff45/Jonathan_Daehnke/India/P1010436_zpsjrzonw6k....

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.