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…
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While in Peru back in January of 2023, I was having a conversation with Pete Mooney about possible herp trip collaborations. Pete and I have herped together in a number of places, including Peru, and a delightful trip to Cuba a few years earlier. “I’m so jealous of your southern Thailand trip,” I said, speaking of an adventure Pete had the previous year. At the time I had been to Thailand twice, but had not visited the southern peninsula region. As it turned out, Pete was open for a second visit, and so we set the wheels in motion for a June expedition. As with previous visits, we made our arrangements through TonTan Travel. Our friends Tony and Tan specialize…
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It’s a bit of a drive but we made from the ocean to the desert in time to get in some road-cruising after dark. There’s one quiet road that I really like, and as a bonus our friend Dan drove in from L.A. to hang out for a couple days. It’s a great road for sidewinders (Crotalus cerastes) and they did not disappoint. In fact, the sidewinders were downright amazing. We came upon our second predation event of the trip, an adult sidewinder with a kangaroo rat, right in the road. We stayed at the scene to make sure no vehicles interrupted (or ran over) the snake as it swallowed its prey. No telling if it had envenomated the roo…
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It started in Las Vegas, as many stories do, and really, there were several significant loops made during this journey. I went through the PITA hoops to secure a rental car at the airport, and then picked up Tim and John at a casino and we left Vegas in our rear-view mirror, heading west into California. We crashed that night near Bakersfield, and the next morning, headed further west to the Carrizo Plain National Monument. We met up with a group doing research on Bluntnose Leopard Lizards (Gambelia sila), and I was thrilled that we got the opportunity to walk the research area and help search for these lizards (which blend in very well with their surroundings). I was even…
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One morning we stopped in at a local animal shelter near Filadelfia and it proved to be quite an interesting experience. Jake and Dermot made a new friend – a fish-eating raccoon named ‘Shampoo’. A little nippy and a lot nosy. The place also had a large number of rescued Redfoot Tortoises (Chelonoidis carbonaria). Dermot and I are redfoot aficionados, and we had a great time walking among the many beautiful adult tortoises. I had high hopes of seeing a wild redfoot, but it was not to be on this trip. The place also had a South American Tapir (Tapirus terrestris), which was dog-tame and enjoyed being petted and scratched. Another new experience for me. The shelter had a number…
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NOTE: “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. Ah, Paraguay. Paraguay is a beautiful country but desperately needs to revamp their immigration bureaucracy – three members of our group were turned back at Customs for ‘suspected forgery of Covid documents’ (they weren’t). Needless to say, this was a…
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Note: ‘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. For the first time in ten years, I did not start off the herping season in January with a trip to Peru. Due to Covid, we canceled our expeditions for the year and planned on regrouping in 2022. As it…
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NOTE: “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. This herping trip took place in early April 2021 and spans three states – Louisiana, Mississippi, and a little bit of Alabama. Much of the trip was spent checking out trash piles, tin sites, and board lines across the three…
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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…
