After a good night’s sleep and a good breakfast, we were ready to get back at it. From here on out, our days had a repeatable pattern – drive a bit, herp in appropriate habitat, drive some more, and then herp again after dark. We would be up in the hills and down on the coast, bouncing back and forth as we made our way south. The food was good, the people were friendly, and the countryside had no end of things to look at as we went along.
The karst limestone escarpments were spectacular, and I was looking forward to seeing more of them in the light of day. This morning we stopped at several temples up in the hills, but unlike last night’s empty edifice, these buildings were occupied. Our mode of operation was to check around the sides and back of the impressive buildings, looking for any cover objects to flip and of course, herps on the move. Any time we visited an active temple, Aoud and Bank would seek out a monk to explain what we were doing, as a matter of respect. Over the entire trip, the monks weren’t really interested in what we were up to, but we asked nonetheless. Occasionally, we would run into other visitors, but for the most part it was just our little group.
Our second temple featured an outstanding set of serpent-guarded stairs, leading up to rooms and tunnels carved into the rock. These we explored in search of Cave Racers (Elaphe taeniura ridleyi), which feed upon the bats, geckos, and other critters living in the caves.
No cave racers showed themselves, but we did make a nice find in one tunnel, which had a deep cavity off to one side, a pit of sorts. Coiled up at the bottom was a hefty Reticulated Python, maybe 3.5 meters in length. I don’t think it was quite as big as the one I saw the night before, but it was still a beast.
The python looked to be in good condition, and it had swallowed a large prey item recently, which showed as a lumpy bulge. Chances are, the snake retreated to this hard-to-access hole in the ground in order to digest its meal. We speculated on the nature of the bulge – I think we all agreed it was probably an unfortunate canine. Most of the temples sported a pack of yappy pariah dogs, and it seemed likely that one of them had come to an unfortunate end.
As we explored more of the caves, we saw a number of hefty Tokay Geckos out and about. I suppose because the cave was dark or nearly dark, the geckos could come out and look for food at any time. I was disappointed that we didn’t see any cave racers, as this looked like a good place for them, with plenty of geckos and bats to eat.
Speaking of bats, there were plenty of them around. I suppose that smaller-sized Reticulated Pythons would have a steady supply of bats to snack on, although we didn’t see any.
Outside the main entrance and to the left was a nice run of rock wall, pockmarked with caves and holes and clefts and overgrown with vegetation. It looked decidedly snakey, and we worked our way over to have a look.
It wasn’t long before we turned up a nice Beautiful Pit Viper, Trimeresurus venustus. The snake was coiled up in woody vegetation right next to the rock face.
Many of the smaller cracks and crevices contained small figurines, while the larger cave areas held larger statues of the Buddha and a lot of stylized figures of monks. We found another small Trimeresurus venustus chilling in the vegetation hugging a rock surface, right behind a line of monk statues.
Such an interesting place to herp, and of course, one wants to be respectful in such places. We would herp around more temples in the days to come, but this one always stands out in my memory.
We drove further south that afternoon. After finding lodgings and food, we visited a nature boardwalk that circled out into an estuary, right on the border with Myanmar. Our main target was another pit viper, but one somewhat different than what we had seen so far.
The boardwalk was actually made of concrete, with the railings molded in that fake-wood style. It was old and mossy but I’m sure it would last a lot longer than any wooden walkway. It kept us about five feet above the mucky mud at low-tide, and gave us a vantage point for spotting some herps from above. We saw several IndoPacific Tree Geckos (Hemiphyllodactylus typus) out in the open on leaves, one close enough for photos.
It didn’t take too long for us to find our target snake, the Mangrove Viper (Trimeresurus purpureomaculatus), coiled up on a tree. I suppose their brownish-purplish coloration helps them to blend in with their surroundings in the mangrove swamps, where there is much less green vegetation.
Another cool find was a rope-thin Blanford’s Bridle Snake (Lycodon davisonii). This species is atypical for a Lycodon – I assume their slender build makes them lizard specialists, preying on Hemiphyllodactylus typus and other local sauria.
We found several more of the “purple-spotted pit vipers” as they are sometimes called. Our elevated position certainly helped us to spot them.
In the morning, we visited another concrete boardwalk further to the south, and along the same tidal estuary. The water was low and we saw some mudskippers, although I wasn’t close enough for any good photos. There were plenty of photogenic crabs close to the walkway to make up for it.
Bank spotted another Trimeresurus purpureomaculatus in some nearby branches, and using a small snake hook, lifted it over to the walkway for a closer look, and then deftly swinging it back over onto its resting place.
We also found a nice Parachute Gecko (Gekko tokehos) tucked up under the eaves of a small building. These gliding geckos were once in the genus Ptychozoon, but have since been lumped into Gekko, despite their aerodynamic adaptations for dropping out of trees and making a soft landing on the ground.
By evening we had traveled down to the Phuket area, and after dark we visited several forested areas up in the hills, just walking along the roads and trails in search of herps. We found a number of Side-spotted Frogs (Limnonectes hascheanus), in the leaf litter. This made me happy, since up to this point in the trip, frogs had been thin on the ground, perhaps because there hadn’t been much rain up to that point.
I am always happy to see a new Cyrtodactylus, and we walked up several Oldham’s Bent-toed Geckos (Cyrtodactylus oldhami). Cyrtodactylus has an amazing radiation of species across southeast Asia and many of them, like this one, are just gorgeous geckos.
Walking along a steep slope above a small trickle of water, we found a Phuket Pitviper (Trimeresurus phuketensis), clinging to a small tree trunk just a few inches above the ground, in an obvious ambush position. Frogs make up a significant part of the Trimeresurus diet, and the presence of nearby water explained the presence of the viper, waiting patiently for something to hop or scuttle close by.
And we did find some frogs close by, several Red-eared Frogs (Hylarana erythraea). A very common frog in southeast Asia, they are about the same size as North American leopard frogs, and a perfect size for Trimeresurus.
Bank pointed up into the trees overhead. “Viper,” he said. And there it was, my number one target for the trip, Wagler’s Palm Viper (Tropidolaemus wagleri). All at once I was both excited and dismayed – it was so far up, and how could I hope to get a decent photo in the dark? “We will come back in the morning,” said Aoud. “It will still be there.” Of course I trusted his great expertise in these matters of natural history, but I knew I would be nervous about it until we came back.
I wasn’t walking away without a ‘safety shot’, so with the aid of a few flashlight beams, I snapped a few photos with my long lens. The snake was perhaps 25-30 feet off the ground, so hopefully I could do better in the light of day.
The night was far from over. More parachute geckos, more Indo-Pacific geckos, and then a crazy cool Green Cat Snake (Boiga cyanea). The many species of Boiga are nocturnal and arboreal, and this adult cyanea was up in a small tree, no doubt poking around for a sleeping lizard or bird.
The next herp we found was a Gunung Raya Green-crested Lizard (Bronchocela rayaensis), which would certainly make a nice meal for an adult Green Cat Snake.
The last herp of the evening was another arboreal serpent, an Elegant Bronzeback (Dendrelaphis formosus). These beauties are typically diurnal snakes, but they can also be found moving about after dark, and they also coil up high in the trees to spend the night. This one suffered a few photos before moving higher up into the canopy.
In the morning we returned to the same spot, and the wagleri hadn’t moved an inch. Shooting up from beneath the tree, the dappled light was not great I moved away from the snake, crossing the road and clambering up an embankment about twenty feet high. This put me closer to the snake, elevation-wise, but I was probably thirty feet or more away. It was the far edge of what I could do with a 100-300 lens, but I walked away with some shots I was happy with, and the daytime colors were much better. And I certainly enjoyed just looking at that fat tree viper through the viewfinder.
Hopefully, we would see more Tropidolaemus as we continued on our way south. Thus endeth Part Two.
