There are many ways to discover amphibians and reptiles – you can road-cruise for them, flip rocks and logs and trash, or even just walk them up. But if you haven’t made use of boardwalks, you’re missing out. There are a lot of boardwalks out there in parks, preserves, and natural areas, and birders make good use of them. As it happens I’ve spotted a number of interesting herps from boardwalks crowded with birders, all of them looking up or out while my focus is considerably closer to the ground. Boardwalks typically allow access to wet areas like swamps or marshes, and this past April I spent some time at a swamp boardwalk in the Jean Lafitte National Historic Park…
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The word terrapin is rooted in the language of native peoples of North America. It is derived from torope, which comes from the southern Algonquin, and more specifically, from the long-extinct Powhatan tongue. It's no secret that words and phrases change over time, and when Europeans roll unfamiliar...
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In January, 2020, with Covid19 still a vague rumor, I traveled to Ecuador with three friends to the Mindo Valley area. We spent a few days up in the hills and mountains (as a flatlander, they all look like mountains to me). Aided by Eric, a local guide, our goal was to see frogs and lizards inhabiting the cloud forest habitat found at higher elevations. Arriving in Quito, we hired a driver with a pickup truck to haul us and our gear up to Mindo. The four of us were not an easy fit in the small crew-cab truck, and it was an uncomfortably cramped journey, and we arrived after midnight, when all the people were asleep and all the…
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In early July of 2020 I made my way west to Otero County, Colorado, to participate in the annual COPARC herp survey. Otero is in the eastern portion of the state and part of it encompasses the Comanche National Grasslands. The grasslands are cut by a number of canyons, and the Purgatoire River passes through it. I had last visited the area in 2007, when I did a little herping and hiked down into Picketwire Canyon to see the dinosaur trackways there. I was going back to help survey the county for amphibians and reptiles, which consisted of hiking canyons and shallow rivers during the day, and road-cruising at night. Fifty-plus people showed up for the survey, which is the…
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At the end of July I flew to Havana with a small group of friends to see what the fuss was all about with Cuban herps. We went there as part of a tour group (Viva Cuba), under a cultural visa, and spent nine days in various places around the western-most quarter of the island. During our time in Cuba, we did a number of cultural things in keeping with our visa and tour itinerary, but to keep this post at a manageable size I’m going to skip most of that (there’s some related photos in the slideshow below) and concentrate on the herps and herp habitat. First up, we visited the hilly and forested Soroa region to the southwest…
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Some of our large group had to return home, but the rest of us pushed on to Hong Kong and another type of herping situation. For the first few days we stayed on Lantau Island, and herped the open green spaces there. The hills were lush with vegetation, and hiking trails along the rainwater catchment systems provided opportunities for observing amphibians and reptiles. It was beautiful up there. Guenther’s Brown Frog (Sylvirana guentheri) was perhaps the most common frog we saw on Lantau. A ‘green phase’ copper-cheeked Frog (Odorrana chloronota). The first snake was this Red-necked Keelback (Rhabdophis subminiatus), which is both venomous and poisonous (it’s a bit complicated: this serpent sequesters bufotoxins in nuchal glands). Giant Spiny Frog (Quasipaa…
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Our big group, swelled even larger by the addition of Alex and Nhut, landed at Hanoi and made their way to a hotel in the old French quarter of the city. How exciting to visit a place that for years seemed completely out of reach! We were heading out of Hanoi the next morning, but this day and night were ours to explore and enjoy the old quarter. In the morning we boarded a chartered bus and headed south and east to Cuc Phuong, Vietnam’s oldest national park, which is situated on line of forested, karsty hills. We checked in with park headquarters, and then rode the last leg down the park road for twenty klicks, terminating at a little…
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Leaving Malaysia behind, Adam returned home to Hong Kong, while Dan, Kevin and I flew to Bangkok, where we met up with ten (ten!) of our herping friends. It took two vans to haul our collective asses around, and we engaged the services of TonTan Travel for logistics and guide services. Tony and Tan are fine, knowledgeable people and fun to be around – I had engaged them on my first trip to Thailand in 2016. We had a day in Bangkok while everyone assembled, and a subset of us headed over to Lumphini Park to check out the free-range water monitors and turtles that make the urban park home. Bill said “I think there’s a snake on that branch…
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I retired from the University of Illinois on May 1st. On the 23rd I boarded a flight to Kuala Lumpur, kicking off a 31 day excursion to 5 countries in southeast Asia. Malaysia was my first stop, and I met up with friends Dan, Kevin, Adam, and Kurt. During our stay, we herped upland and lowland forests. On our first night in KL we herped a nearby forest with great success. Our first herp was a Peter’s bow-fingered gecko, Cyrtodactylus consobrinus. Kurt spotted a snake in a small tree – a blue bronzeback, Dendrelaphis cyanochloris. This species inflates its body to show a brilliant blue on the tips of the scales, but it was tough to get the snake to…
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I’ve threatened for a while to kick off a Big Year in search of amphibians and reptiles, much like some birders do. 2019 wasn’t a Big Year on purpose, but when the smoke cleared, it was certainly a ‘big-ish’ year; a thousand-plus herps observed (and vouchered in HerpMapper), spread across 380 species, and 194 lifers. Here are many of the highlights from this awesome year, so big-ish I had to split it up among a half-dozen posts. ‘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…
