It's that time again! Although, truthfully, over most of Florida anytime is "that" time. That time is vocalization time for one of our most abundant anurans, the Florida leopard frog, Rana (Lithobates) s. sphenocephala.



Unlike the northern leopard frog that wanders so far from water that it is often dubbed the "meadow frog," our Florida form is usually not encountered more than a couple of powerful jumps away from water. But it is not awfully particular about the water source. I see it near swamps, marshes, ponds, lake edges, ditches, canals, even in our little artificial frog and minnow ponds in the backyard.

Oh, and did I mention the little halves of the rain barrels where I grow a few aquatic plants? Yep, they even call from these and are adept at jumping over the 18" walls. In other words, if there is standing water of reasonable quality the leopard frogs are quite apt to be present.

Florida leopard frogs are not bashful about advertising their presence. The chuckles and squeaks of their calls can be heard sporadically during the day and almost incessantly from dusk til midnite. They are most vocal on rainy nights.

The ground color of these profusely spotted frogs may vary from brown to bright green but is often a pale olive. (The frog in the image above is a brighter green than is usual.) All in all they are a pretty and welcome natural addition to our garden herpetofauna.

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The Eastern mud snake, Farancia a. abacura, remains quite common throughout its range. Unlike the related riverine rainbow snake that feeds almost exclusively on migratory American eels, the mud snake eats resident elongate salamanders of the genera Amphiuma and Siren, as well as an occasional frog.

Mud snakes are a large snake with occasional females exceeding 6.5 feet in length by a few inches. Males are smaller.



This is a primarily aquatic snake that is found in many swamps and marshes from southeastern Virginia and central Georgia to the southern tip of the Florida peninsula. Throughout much of Alabama and the western panhandle of Florida it intergrades with the western subspecies. Where populous, these snakes may often be seen crossing roads on sultry/rainy nights. Heavy vehicular traffic can wreak havoc at such times.

Mudsnakes are beautifully colored. They are shiny black dorsally and primarily red ventrally. There are regularly placed black blotches along the edges of the belly scales on both sides. The tail is tipped with a conical spine.

Occasional examples are anerythristic, the red being replaced by white. Albinism is known.

When in their range and habitat this is a species that you should take the time to look up.


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Based on a small series of specimens that he collected (total of 3 in the late 40s and early 50s), Wilfred T. Neill described the Southern Florida Rainbow Snake, Farancia erytrogramma seminola, in 1964.



Found by Neill in a fairly large (but not always flowing) creek in southern Florida, Neill based his diagnosis on the greater amount of black pigment on the venter and lower sides of this subspecies when compared with the more northerly common rainbow snake. Reportedly an obligate eel-eater, the perceived or actual rarity (this snake was declared extinct by US Fish and Wildlife Service biologists on October 5, 2011) might be due to a reduced number of eels in the waterway.

Despite the edict issued by USFWS, several attempts have been since made by private individual and conservation organizations to find this subspecies. Although all efforts have failed, rewards for verified sightings have been offered and hope that this snake will again be found continues.

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A large "highway under construction" sign lay mostly submerged in the South Carolina slough, but the top corner was exposed and propped up by the road shoulder.

Gordy Johnston and I were hoping to find an eastern kingsnake on the grassy shoulder. Of course, we knew when we saw the nearly submerged sign that we would have to check beneath it for a water snake or two. We lifted the sign and the watery mud on which it lay harbored a snake all right, but one that was totally different from what had been expected.



Beneath the sign was a magnificent rainbow snake, Farancia e. erytrogramma. I stared in disbelief at the black and red linear pattern and spine-tipped tail of this beautiful denizen of marshland, riverine, and estuarine habitats, the first rainbow snake I had ever seen.

That first sighting was back in the early 1950s, a time when both the rainbow snakes and their prey-fish, the American eel, were actually common. Now, 60 years later, because of detrimental habitat modifications, both the snake and its food fish are quite uncommon. In fact, there are many field herpers of today who, despite searching diligently through habitat in locales known to have once supported these secretive snakes have failed to find them.

But while the populations of the common rainbow snake have undeniably declined, those of its more newly described southernmore relative, the southern Florida rainbow snake, seem to have been entirely extirpated. But that is another story.

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The southeastern two-toed amphiuma and its more westerly three-toed relative were no strangers to me. But it was not for more than three decades after Wilfred T. Neill found and described the one-toed amphiuma, Amphiuma pholeter, in 1950 that I became acquainted with the little salamander.

In fact, it was not until researcher Paul Moler took a bit of time to describe the habitat of this third species that I finally succeeded in finding a few. It was, it turned out, a mud dweller, but rather being an inhabitant of mud-bottomed ponds and ditches as reported in most mentions, the one-toed amphiuma dwelt in the soupy mud of creek side and swampy seepeages. Small wonder my earlier searches had been futile.

Unlike the two and the three-toed amphiumas, both of which attain adult lengths of about 3 feet, the average size of the one-toed amphiuma is between 9 and 12 inches long. It is very slender; has reduced, lidless, eyes; and its legs, each bearing a single digit, are comparatively tiny. What a wonderfully adapted caudatan.

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Chickens, at least our ornamental chickens, are not overly bright. They either totally ignore the occasional yellow rat snake that finds its way among them or, if the snake happens to be small, they may gather around to peck at it.

Fortunately they are big chickens and the snakes usually just pass through the coop with no harm occurring to either party. Yellow rat snakes (I'll continue to refer to them as Pantherophis obsoletus quadrivittatus even though they are formally known now as Eastern rat snakes, Pantherophis alleghaniensis) are one of the more common backyard snakes here.

Not only are we alerted to their presence by cackling chickens, but I occasionally turn them up beneath coverboards in the yard, amidst plants in the small greenhouse, and we are made aware of those in the big oaks (including ones hiding in clumps of Spanish moss) by the hordes of busybody birds that gather to harass them.

As yellow rat snakes go, the adults of the local ones are not particularly pretty, being of a decided yellow-green hue. They bear four broad and distinct dark lines. The juveniles lack the striping and are strongly blotched. Since we live in an area that has plenty of cotton rats and cotton mice, the rat snakes we do see always look well fed. It's a pleasure to be able to coexist peacefully with these interesting colubrines.

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Something was wrong.

I had let our little blind cocker spaniel out to bask in the driveway, but instead of relaxing she was slowly walking the perimeter of my parked car, sniffing and snuffling intently.

I watched her for a minute or two, then, knowing this was not normal behavior for her, decided to investigate. As I neared the car I could hear a soft buzzing that grew louder as I approached. I'd heard the sound often enough over the years to recognize it as the buzzing of a rattlesnake.

I called the dog to me, put her in the house, grabbed a snake hook and bucket from the closet, knelt to determine the actual position of the snake (an Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake, Crotalus adamanteus) and gently hooked it into the open.



A gravid, 3.5-foot long female, she coiled again, continued her lazy buzzing and showed no display of hostility even when coaxed into the bucket lying next to her.

This was a lucky snake. She had somehow crossed the busy thoroughfare of four lanes that separated our yard from Paynes Prairie, chosen a yard where she was welcomed, not reviled, in which to rest, and would now be taken a little deeper into the Prairie and released.

She was the third live rattler to come visiting over the years and would have been the sixth if the three found dead on the separating roadway had made the journey safely.

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Throughout the range of the striped newt, Notophthalmus perstriatus, which extends northward from northern central Florida to northeastern Georgia, this salamander has a strangely localized, enigmatic, distribution.



Within its known range, this newt may be found in one pothole pond and be absent from several others nearby. Or, conversely, populations may exist in most ponds but not in one or two others that to humans, at least, seem identical. It has become apparent to researchers that what to them seems eminently suitable habitat is considered otherwise by newt populations.

Some populations of striped newts are predominantly paedomorphic, the salamanders becoming sexually mature while still gilled larvae.



We are so accustomed to learning of reduced amphibian numbers that when today both Glenn Bartolotti and Kevin Enge announced that the latter researcher had found a new population of striped newts in Osceola County, Florida, the news was very welcome. Of considerable interest is the fact that this population extends the previously suspected southern range limits of the newt well to the southeast. We can only hope that other discrete populations exist and are awaiting discovery.