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…
