Hey there! I started field herping in the early 1970s, and I’ve been blogging about herps since 1996. This was a few years before blogging was invented, but nobody told us, the handful of proto-bloggers who felt the compulsion to write about our adventures with amphibians and reptiles.
Over the years, what I wrote about and how I wrote it has changed a lot. I hope the writing has improved. I’m retired now, with maybe more time, so there’s less excuse for sloppy and thoughtless writing. It’s also somewhat easier to make a post, although I spend more time than I like logged in as WordPress admin to fix/tweak/add stuff.
I’m happy that I incorporated the Hot Stove Herping format. “Hot Stove Herping’ is a phrase I coined years ago, for use in end-of-year posts on the old Field Herp Forum. I stole it from baseball; members of the ‘hot stove league’ huddle together during the cold winter months and talk baseball until spring and the game comes back. In a similar fashion, field herpers living in moderate climates hunker down amid the cold and snow and think of the year that passed, and dream of the coming spring. The Hot Stove posts aren’t deep or thoughtful, but they’re a great way to capture the essence of a field trip.
I have other post categories that are more useful for deep dives into herping and herps and herpetology. I also plan to do short posts to support some of my podcast episodes, just to expand a little on the themes within, and some backstory that might be of interest. Sometimes there’s another layer to what gets talked about behind the microphones.
Thanks for reading along this far. I hope you enjoy these posts of mine, and I hope you’re reading them on a big screen or tablet – I build them with big, beautiful pictures, and that’s lost on a phone turned sideways. And if it’s not apparent yet, I’m also interested in other herp-related blogs, so drop me a note if you have one. Hell, drop me a note if you don’t.
-Mike