I grew up only a few houses away from a fair-sized lake in Massachusetts where I spent a lot of time as a kid watching musk and painted turtles in the shallows and American and Fowler’s toads when they gathered on the sandy shores in the spring to trill or scream, and listening to the plunking notes of green frogs and the jug-o-rums of Bullfrogs, Rana catesbeiana.



Jug-o-rum? I listened to the squeaky fright notes of first-year bullfrogs along the lakeshore and to the deep bass of the old territory-holders out in the lily-pad patches, but I’m not sure I ever heard one of those bullfrogs say jug-o-rum.

I read Conant. I read Behler and King. They both mentioned the jug-o-rum calls. So I began listening to bullfrogs in earnest. I listened to the bullfrogs on Longmeadow Flats. Heard a lot of deep notes, but jug-o-rum? Nope. Ditto for the ones in northern New Jersey, for all in southeastern South Carolina, and for others in north Florida.
"Brrrrrrrrrrummmmmm," or maybe "urrrrrrrrr-ummmmmmm," but no matter where the chorus was heard -- Maine, Texas, or Baja California -- I heard nary a jug-o-rum amongst them. Not a one!

So one hot summer night, seeking validation for my inability to hear what seemed to be the traditional call, I talked Jake Scott into a bullfrog search and listen foray in north central Florida. We found a spot that was literally resounding with bullfrog vocalizations. I listened and, happily, didn’t hear a single jug-o-rum. Ok, Jake, I asked, what do the bullfrogs say? His answer was immediate: "Jug-o-RUMMMMMMM."

I give up. Jug-o-rummmmmm it is.

More photos under the jump...

Under ordinary conditions I like birds of prey. But the red-shouldered hawks in this neighborhood have about outstayed their welcome, at least from me. The hawks moved in, built a nest in a big pine a few houses away, and set up serious housekeeping. First it seemed to be the introduced Cuban Brown Anoles that were the preferred prey. Although I enjoy watching the anoles they really don’t belong here and there seems no way the hawks could get them all anyway.

A few years ago, Patti and I decided that the Southern Toads needed a helping hand to make it through what seemed to be a never ending drought. We put a little 10 x 12 foot pond up on the hill and toad song again filled the neighborhood. And Southern Leopard Frogs moved in. The toads were pretty nocturnal but the leopard frogs were active both day and night. The hawks soon found these. New prey.

But then the Eastern Garter Snakes and Southern Black Racers also found the frogs in our puddle. The snakes moved in and their populations persisted for about three years. It was nice to see a big racer periscoping for frogs.

Our screened back deck is a wonderful addition to the house. Rather than a deck we refer to it as our aviary, for it is home to a half a dozen European goldfinches that entertain us non-stop. But we could just as well call it our "lizardarium," for despite deterring the omnipresent mosquitoes many local lizards wander in and out along pathways known only to them.

Broad-headed skinks appear now and again, but most of the lizards are one of two kinds of anoles, the native green or the introduced Cuban brown. The green anoles are the most active and the most arboreal, and as I watch their antics my thoughts often drift back to the first green anoles I ever saw.



It was in the 1940s, I was 7 or 8 years old, and the anoles, a slender golden chain affixed around their neck (no photos), were being offered for sale as living lapel decorations at the New York Sportsman’s Show.

They were being sold as American chameleons, and with them came a care sheet that explained that all the purchaser needed to do to assure the lizard a long life was to provide it with sugar water.

I had never seen such wonderful creature and sugar water would be easy enough to provide, so I wheedled my parents into buying me one lizard. Through trial and error I learned that the little lizard needed a much more varied diet than sugar water and that when he was turned loose on my mother’s houseplants he avidly hunted houseflies and other insect repast.

Could this little lizard have been the cause of my lifelong infatuation with herps? Well, it and the long ago herp supply company, Quivira Specialties, certainly were contributors to my lingering interest.

More photos under the jump...

The car was far ahead of us when it swerved sharply. What, we wondered, was the reason for that?

Jake and I were road cruising and not in any real hurry. The car ahead had disappeared from sight around a curve, and we were now near their position when they had swerved.

Suddenly Jake yelled, "Canebrake!" And sure enough, lying almost dead center in the road was a 4-and-a-half foot long canebrake rattler, Crotalus horridus "atricaudatus."



As I slowed to a stop, Jake grabbed a hook and piled out. As he neared the snake, now alerted, another car approached from around the curve. Jake touched the snake on the tail and fortunately, the snake proved to be a runner. It wanted no familiarity with anything and darted across the road, but then stopped on the grassy verge and looked like it was heading back. We stopped it.

The other car, filled with young women, stopped near us. They asked in unison, "What is it?"

"Rattler," Jake replied.

"What are you doing with it?" one of them asked.

"Keeping it off of the road." I replied.

"Let it go," one of the young women said. "We came back to kill it."

"Looks like you’re out of luck," I told them.

"You’re not killing this one," Jeff said. A couple of more unintelligible comments, and they left.

Gives me a warm, fuzzy, feeling to know that Jake and I were able to save this big male from the road idiots.

The locale was rather open, and once the canebrake was in the canebrake, having slowed to cross the roadside ditch, we guided him to the foot of a big pine.

Once against it, he coiled quietly, a monarch of the southern brakes.

More photos under the jump...

The last time Patti and I visited the Daytona Captive Breeders Expo was four years ago. I had looked at about all of the ball pythons and leopard geckos I chose to see on that day, and we were taking the long way around to the exit.

As I was passing almost the last sales booth in that aisle, I glanced to the left and stopped in my tracks. In one of the half dozen tanks on the table was a beautiful lizard that I recognized immediately as a Diploglossus lessonae. I sidled over to the table, and as I got there my interest in the lizards was sidetracked by a tank of frogs.

They were a Pacman-type frog but of a species I had not before seen. The vendor asserted that they were Brazilian horned frogs, Ceratophrys aurita. Based on that, I purchased the only one of the three that looked in good condition. This was a male and even he had what appeared to be a corneal lipid deposit on one eye. We named him Grumpy. Philippe deVosjoli bought the other two, and I believe that they are still alive. Philippe determined that the species was not aurita as initially thought, but was another Brazilian taxon, Ceratophrys joazeirensis, a mid-sized species.

Whatever this little frog may be, he has now stared at me morosely for the better part of four years. His periods of quietude are interspersed with an occasional night of vocalizing as thunderstorms or tropical depressions roll through. And he has never once refused his nightcrawlers. Not once.

More photos under the jump...

Stopped by the little turtle pool, as I do each morning, and found a hatchling turtle floating in a patch of sunshine. I took a hurried look around on the surrounding land and found a a hole about an inch in diameter and 3 inches deep.

Inside were four eggshells. There was no question about the identification, The only species housed there had been Rhinoclemmys pulcherrima incisa, the Guatemalan (painted) wood turtle. The adults were now in a large pen for the summer rainy season.

This turtle, if you’re not familiar with it has a brown, rough surfaced, carapace that may be quite flat, rather highly domed, or somewhere between these extremes. The carapace is a warm brown (color is sometimes hard to determine because these turtles are adept and persistent at kicking dirt upon themselves) and the yellow plastron bears a large, dark central blotch that is often weakly edged with pale rose.

But it is the facial neck and forelimb patterns that give rise to the common name of painted. The brown to grayish face and anterior neck bears a complex of thin, but easily visible, bright red stripes. The red striping is also present on the anterior surface of the forelimbs but there the striping is broader and even more pronounced. All in all, these are pretty turtles and at least as importantly, they are hardy and easily cared for.

It seemed apparent that there were no more hatchlings in the pond, so I began a methodical search of the surrounding area. Looking amidst and around the grasses disclosed one additional hatchling. The next day, following a hard rain, I found the third, and on the third day I found the fourth baby. I had now found a hatchling for each of the empty eggshells.

The hatchlings (all brought indoors) are quite like miniatures of the adults in appearance, but have less strongly textured carapaces and rosier plastrons.



I wonder if a second nesting occurred this summer. Another month and I should know.

More photos under the jump...

The little creek puddled out a bit as it neared the road and then was constricted narrowly into a metal culvert that passed beneath the road. Upstream a bit, the creek narrowed and gurgled merrily downhill around and over some boulders. Still further upstream, the boulders were larger and the creek was even more precipitous. Beyond that I couldn’t see from my current vantage point, but I’d soon know the scope of things.

To either side of the creekbed grassy meadows interspersed with small escarpments and many boulders sloped far upward, and at their summits were stands of pines. We started at the bottom and began working our way upward. Tough walking. So we moved to the grassy slopes and slipped and tripped our way to the top (hoping all the while for no encounter with a hidden timber rattler), reaccessed the stream, and began our walk downward. This was a little easier.

We were at this creek in the hopes of finding a seal salamander, Desmognathus montanus, exhibiting piebaldism. Kenny had been told by a researcher that there was a high incidence of this aberrancy at this locale. In fact, his initial information was that all of the seal salamanders in this creek were piebald.



We walked slowly along the creek bed, turning and replacing an occasional likely-looking, water-swept rock along the way. Going was slow, but with the first few salamanders found we determined that definitely not all of the salamanders were piebald. In fact, as the day wore on and one after the other the salamanders proved normal, we began to wonder whether we’d actually find one that was piebald.

We did. In fact we found three, one adult and two juveniles. We extend a big thank you to Kenny’s sources!

More photos under the jump...

The little car bumped and thumped as we raced along a nearly dark forest road in North Carolina. Our destination was one of those many that appeared only a mile or so away on the map, but when you factored in the twists, turns, ups, and downs, bumps and thumps, it proved to be a good 30 minutes from our starting point.

Salamander was the name, and finding them was the game. The little salamanders that we sought were the red-legged and the red-cheeked variants of the Ocoee salamander, Desmognathus ocoee. These are harmless mimics, if you will, of the distasteful Jordan’s salamander complex phases.

We finally sped into a parking area overlooking a deserted campground. And in the middle of the campground was a ring of sizable rocks and a dozen or more well charred log sections all topsy turvy atop a bed of ashes. I spent some time flipping logs and rocks in the surrounding woodlands. Kenny headed straight for the campsite. By the time I got to that area he had already found Red-legged Salamanders, Plethodon shermani, Blue Ridge Two-lined Salamanders, Eurycea wilderae, and several of the desired color variants of the Ocoee Salamander, Desmognathus ocoee.

But for us the best was yet to come. Beneath one log we found an Ocoee Salamander that rather than either/or was gaudily clad in red not only on the cheeks but on the legs as well. This was a variant that neither of us had been aware of.



Success, and now the long drive back to hustle and bustle of the peopled world.

More photos under the jump...

If you take the time to look back into the nomenclatural history of the northern leopard frog, Rana pipiens, you will note at least two names that were long ago hidden in synonomy.

Both were of northern populations, Minnesota and Wisconsin to be specific and I found both to be just different enough from a typical northern leopard frog to be of interest.



One variant, Rana pipiens burnsi by name, was nearly devoid of the oval leopard spots that typify the species.

The little dugout angled out of the river and approached our dock. In it sat a villager holding something at bay with one paddle while deftly maneuvering with another.

Mike Pingleton was closest, and even before the boat touched shore, he was excited. And well he should have been, for unlike one of the more common snakes the villagers usually bring us, on the bottom of the boat was a two foot long creature clad in scales of tan that were arranged in annuli.



The villager lifted the creature gently on a paddle, and Mike soon had it in hand. About the diameter of a thumb, we were all soon staring intently at a fairly common but seldom seen, legless, burrower, a Giant Worm lizard (more correctly a Giant Amphisbaenid), Amphisbaena alba.

Besides lacking limbs, this intriguing creature lacks functional eyes. The scalation is arranged in prominent rings that give it the superficial appearance of a gigantic earthworm.

To many of us, the appearance of this very specialized lizard-like animal was the high point of the trip.

More photos under the jump...

How could this be? Was I delusional? We were treading a narrow trail through old secondary rainforest in Amazonian Peru, not in southeast Asia, the bailiwick of the green water dragon.

We were out late. It was after midnight. And there, sleeping soundly on a supple limb at face height, was a foot long green lizard that looked an awful lot like the dragon with which I was so familiar. Big angular head, somewhat stocky body and tapering tail. Vertebral crest, sturdy legs.



As I photographed the sleeping lizard I was doing an extensive memory search and finally, as a default, came up with the hoplocercine genus Enyalioides, the forest dragons. And following through on the thought process led me eventually to the Amazon Forest Dragon, E. laticeps.

This was exciting, for I had never seen one in the wild. I could now count this as a lifer on my ever growing life-list.

More photos under the jump...

One by one we have found and photographed over 130 species of herps on Madre Selva Biological Preserve. The Preserve is located on the banks of Peru’s Rio Orosa, a few dozen miles upriver from its confluence with the mighty Rio Amazonas.

But there is one species, a hallmark of Amazonian reptiles, that continues to elude our wandering gazes. This is the Basin form of the Emerald Tree Boa, Corallus batesi.



We are elated when this magnificent snake is found one river up or down Amazon from the preserve and we then renew our efforts to find it. The intensive searches, by day, by night, in fair weather and foul, have probably led to our finding of more than a dozen other elusive species, and for this we are grateful. But it would be so very nice to be able to add an emerald to the ever-burgeoning list.

During January of 2014 (the normally rainy Amazon summer—it’s in the southern hemisphere) we will be trying again. Wish us luck. Or come on down and join us!

More photos under the jump...

When I saw my first living Western two-lined forest pit vipers, Bothriopsis bilineatus smaragdinus, in the wilds of Amazonian Peru, it was more or less because of a fortuitous rest, During that rest, a clutch of four neonates had been found coiled quietly on the broad leaves of a trailside shrub.

Patti and I were leading a herp photography tour, and earlier that day one of the participants had asked me what snake I had yet failed to see was highest on my list of "want to sees." My answer to her had been that it was this arboreal pit viper, a taxon that I had searched for on many other occasions but had failed to find.



In fact, I had seen this black-peppered green subspecies only two times before. The first time had been in the cages of a northeastern reptile dealer. The second time had been an adult that had been killed by a Peruvian villager. Therefore I knew that the snake occurred in the forests that now surrounded us. But time and again Patti and I had walked various trails and failed to see the creature.

All in all a spectacular night. Rained for the entire night. Periods of light rain then periods of driving rain. Driving rains dominated the night until about 22:00, and then light rains prevailed.

So the rains finally came, and within hours areas that during the drought had seemed seriously herp-depleted (and perhaps in what were pre-drought actual numbers they are) were transformed into seething masses of reptiles and amphibians.



It was wonderful to again hear the voices of frogs, toads, and treefrogs, voices long silenced by enduring drought, emanating boisterously from newly replenished waterways and roadside ditches and to see the anuran-eating snakes that are so dependent on the amphibians.

Although the seasonally expected (and hoped for) rains continued in some areas of north Florida, many nearby areas continued to suffer the effects of the long drought. Even where rain fell in reasonable amounts the levels of surface water were lowered quickly by the sponging effects of a substrate too long dry. There remains much catching up to do.

And now that the normal rainy season is behind us and dry weather is again prevailing we are again wondering about the true effects of the long prevailing drought? Has a degree of normalcy actually returned to our seasonal weather patterns or were the two rain events of this year nothing more than lucky quirks?

More photos under the jump...

Some days are just better spent sleeping late. Today Jake got me up and running early promising beautiful weather and herps unlimited. He came through on the weather. It was a cool morning then a warmish day that by noontime had turned nearly to hot.But the herp presence—well it was limited at best.

Our herp trip took us about 50 miles northwest of Gainesville, to a spot where both Jake and I had herped many-a-time over the years. We knew that the locale harbored a wide variety of herps -- lizards, a tortoise species, anurans, and snakes. I was kind of hoping for a pine snake sighting but anything, even a garter snake or racer, would keep me happy. Jake dittoed this (but he secretly seemed to be thinking hog-nose). And almost anything would be better than sitting and scanning slides.



Yellow seemed to be the color of the day. The sun was golden yellow, and shone down with an intensity belying the season. Yellow was the color of the flowers, goldenrod, butter and eggs, coreopsis, and others. All out-shone the surrounding woodlands that were adrift with falling leaves, and the remaining leaves were various hues of seasonally tired greens.

But what has all of this got to do with herps? Well, nothing, really, for although we drove slowly for several hours, scouring the roads ahead, to the left and to the right, there was an amazing absence of herps.

We saw some great birds, and were about ready to pack it in when Jake cried, "Snake!"

And sure enough, crossing the road ahead was a black racer ! Oh joy. My day was made! (That’s facetiousness, in case you don’t recognize it as such.)

Well, actually, I do like racers, so this snake was a welcome sighting. Then two adult gopher tortoises were seen feeding on roadside vegetation. Then a long period elapsed with no additional herp sightings until, again, "Snake!" All the while hoping for a pine snake, I looked down and saw the little snake that was lying quietly in the road. I knew Jake would be happy: It was an adult male southern hog-nose.

(More Southern hog-nosed snakes under the jump...)

It was nigh on to one in the morning and I was meandering slowly along a rain-slicked and very muddy trail. The rest of the gang were long asleep on the tour boat.

It had sprinkled most of the day, poured for some of it, and was back to a sprinkle now. Lighting was probably slicing through the distant sky but the canopy obliterated the display. Only the rumbling and grumbling of thunder alerted me to the potential. Something was telling me I was going to get wet—probably very wet (again) very soon. And that something was right on target.

Soon the sound of the thunder was right overhead and rain could be heard in the canopy. It would still be a few minutes before it splashed its way earthward. I began an ascent up a fair incline at about the same time the rain began its descent. Within seconds the incline was slicker than the proverbial greased pig and I was concentrating on every footstep.

Upward, upward---SPLAT! Something big, slimy, and unexpected splatted onto my face. I screamed and as I slipped downward, I knocked it to the ground.



The rain now fell in torrents and I still had no idea what had hit me. But as I moved to the edge of the trail a big brown leaf leapt from the ground and stuck to an upright sapling about three feet above the ground.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I recognized this as a giant broad-headed treefrog, Osteocephalus taurinus.

Enough excitement! Time now to head back to the boat.

(More photos under the jump!)

What's a coqui, you ask?

Well, if ever you had met a vocalizing male the chances are pretty good you wouldn’t have to ask. From the repetitive, whistled, almost strident, loud and distinctive call notes both common and species names of this diminutive tropical frog have been coined.

Although there are several species of coquis now known (and perhaps more to be described) only one species of coqui, Eleutherodactylus coqui, is known to occasionally visit the United States. Until recently the coqui was thought to have been established in the Florida City, Florida and in the New Orleans, Louisiana areas. It is now realized that the small numbers in each of those populations originally and periodically arrive in potted plants brought from their Puerto Rican homeland.

Here's a little male Eleutherodactylus coqui singing his repetetive and musical "coqui" in the crotch of an orange tree in our South Florida yard.



Coincidentally, I had just brought a dozen heliconia plants from a South Florida nursery a day earlier. Equally coincidental was the fact that the little frog was heard almost nightly until silenced by the first cold snap of winter. Because of temperature fluctuations there seems little chance that this traveler will ever become established in the USA.

More photos under the jump...

For several years now, since our lengthy drought dried their habitats and wildfires swept over their swampland strongholds, I have been unable to find the interesting little carpenter frog, Rana virgatipes, in Florida.



Jake Scott joined me in the search a couple of years ago but despite the return of a heavier rainfall, higher water levels, and a resurgence of the sphagnum in the acidic locales preferred by this pretty little ranid, we continue to fail.

This little ranid was never widespread in Florida. It was restricted to the northeastern portions of the state in the southward drainage from Georgia’s Okefenokee Swamp. Our searches have taken us into some very remote areas, many new for us but all looking like ideal habitat for carpenter frogs. On these searches we have seen many amphibian species -- pig frogs, southern leopard frogs, southern toads, oak toads, eastern spadefoots, and at least a half dozen species of hylids -- as well as many taxa of reptiles. We’ve been in the field by day and by night. We’ve waded the tepid ankle to waist deep waters on moonless nights, on moonlit nights, and during the daylight hours. No carpenters!

No Peeping Tom this, merely a peeping anole. This little brown anole, Anolis s. sagrei, has been utilizing the same shrubs, windowsills and screens outside of my office for about three years now. He lost the distal half of his tail to a larger male a couple of years ago when he was much smaller. It is obviously regenerated and makes him identifiable.



The vertebral crest on this guy is magnificent and the dewlap is often distended and simply held out for seconds on end. He often bobs and displays at me while he is on the horizontal sill and I'm sitting at the computer. He stands his ground against other browns but often darts away from the bigger male green anoles.

He often positions himself on the horizontal frame of the window and from this position he bobs and displays (I feel sure it is at me because he’s looking directly at me the whole time) for minutes on end, and he does this several times a day.

Size differences in populations of the African leopard tortoise are rather well known to hobbyists. Those at the northernmost (top) and southernmost (bottom) extremes of the range attain much larger adult sizes than those in the center.

Perhaps because they are not as well known to hobbyists, the fact that a similar variance in size occurs in the Indian star tortoise, Geochelone elegans, is not as often realized.



My stars, newly received, are of the middle (small-sized) population. They were hatched about 14 years ago by Bern Tryon, Mike Ogle and crew at the Knoxville Zoo, They were kept and coddled for the next 14 years by turtle and tortoise researcher Jim Harding.

Luck alone facilitated their recent transfer to me. Jim decided that he would like the stars to have a bit more “playtime in the sunshine,” so he sent them my way.



Of course, then Mother Nature stepped in; knowing that star tortoises are not awfully fond of excessive moisture, she has provided us with almost continual hard rains. So, with the exception of two or three days, the tortoises' tenure here has been inside with artificial heat and light. But on the few days they were able to go out side each found a sunny patch of grass and weeds, ate until sated, and then sprawled in the sunlight for a lengthy bask.



They seem to be fitting in nicely, and I feel certain that there will be more sunlight someday.

Throughout the decades, ready availability at affordable prices have kept the leopard tortoise, Geochelone (Stigmochelys) pardalis, high on the list of hobbyist favorites. I have always been on of those hobbyists.



My four leopard tortoises, received from long-time friend and fellow field researcher Randy Limberg, arrived as several day old hatchlings. To say the least their appetite was already on the hearty side and, like Topsy, the little creatures grew and grew -- and grew.



Within a very few years, all exceeded 30 pounds each, and the male was about 45 pounds. They were big, but even more importantly, they were personable, all being completely tame.

Dennie Miller was excited. He had recently learned of the existence of a “new kingsnake” in Texas. This was the Blair’s kingsnake, a species that, according to the lore and to Dennie, was the “queen of them all."

Now, he, and we (Gordy Johnston and I) were piling into Gordy’s well aged (almost geriatric) VW beetle with Texas’ Hanging Judge Roy Bean’s legendary region our ultimate destination. Our quest—well, you can guess.

And as luck would have it, on that first hunt we succeeded in finding not one but two of those coveted kingsnakes that are now known, after several taxonomic modifications, to be a color variant of the gray-banded kingsnake, Lampropeltis alterna.

The first was a dark phase, and it was found beneath the cattle guard almost at the door of Bill and Doris Chamberlin’s old Langtry gas station.



The second one, much more brilliantly colored, was crossing the Comstock Road.

Being more an amphibian person than a reptile person, on the first of my many trips to Amazonian Peru the anuran I wished most to see was Atelopus spumarius, the Amazon harlequin frog. When I told our Peruvian guides C-sar and Segundo this they had no idea what I was talking about for firstly, most of the tour clients who visited were snake enthusiasts and secondly, I had no idea what the local name for Atelopus was. So I came up with a name that I thought might help; Ranita Pintada, little painted frog. Despite walking through rainforest that seemed ideal I zeroed out. Wondering why, the finding of Atelopus became nearly an obsession.



The next trip down there I was better prepared. I brought a picture with me. Still neither Segundo nor C-sar recognized the frog, but now they knew what I was hoping for, and being astute guides, they headed to the back of the preserve. That day, along the long trail, they found not one but two of this coveted species. Couldn't be any better than that.

Because of some strange compulsion, I had decided that I wanted to photograph the very variable yellow rat snake from every Florida county in which it occurred. This quest would take me roughly over four-fifths of the peninsula, excluding only the northernmost and northwesternmost counties.

Just two nights earlier, with Mike Manfredi, I had started my search of Lake County. An afternoon shower had left the grasses and shrubs spangled with twinkling droplets but the pavement was now dry. Traffic was very light. The sun had dipped nearly to the western horizon but what had promised to be a beautiful sunset had been obscured by an almost solid cloud cover. Within minutes after sunset natricines (water, crayfish, and ribbon snakes) began crossing the road. But no rat snakes, yellow or otherwise, had made an appearance.



That night I was accompanied by Jake Scott. Climatic conditions were a bit different. Roadway and vegetation were both dry and rather than being obscured by a cloud cover the stars twinkled above. The moon was just peeping above the horizon. We made a couple of passes over the 10 mile stretch of road. Traffic had been light but now a car was quickly approaching us. I was watching the oncoming vehicle when Jake hollered "Snake! Yellow!"

Three teeny-weenies unexpectedly pipped and emerged from some eggs that I had thought, until the event, had no chance of hatching.



Fact is, the eggs, a clutch of six, all looked bad. All were discolored, windowed, and shriveled. Although as I do with all clutches I moved these eggs to an incubator, it seems that I was so disappointed in their appearance that I promptly forgot them.



Then fifty days later, when checking the progress of a clutch of diamond-carpet python eggs in that incubator, from one of those “no chance” eggs a tiny reddish head protruded. And although the three top ones were obviously dead, two others on the bottom tier had pipped.

I was sure glad then that I hadn’t tossed that clutch. Twenty-four hours later, all three of these little brick red snakes with reddish brown blotches had fully emerged.

I’m never quite sure, when I first take the dogs out early in the morning what backyard visitor I’ll encounter. It could be a raccoon, an armadillo, a grey fox, a feral cat -- or an alligator.



Alligators of various sizes often wander through the yard. They might come from the pond down the hill heading for the wide open spaces of Paynes Prairie State Preserve. Or for reasons best known to them, they may leave the comparative vastness of the Prairie (especially during drouth conditions) and aim towards the downhill neighborhood pond.

Many of the gators seem to make it as far as our yard and then take a break for an hour (or a day) before continuing their journey. If they’re small we try to see them safely across the roadway, carrying them in whichever direction they seem to be heading. If they’re large we wish them well, but they must journey at their own speed.

Well, actually, it takes more than a bit of rain to get the gopher frogs, Rana capito, up and moving. Truth be told, a bit of rain may get them near the mouths of the burrows in which they are usually secluded, but it takes a whole durn-lot of rain to get them out of and beyond their entryways.



The gopher frog may be the most seldom seen of the “common” southeastern frogs. A species of sandhill ponds, it spends a goodly percentage of the daylight hours an arm’s length or further back in the burrow of the gopher tortoise. When in the ponds the snoring calls of the gopher frog are unmistakable.

Like most frogs, the gopher frog is capable of considerable color change. Often having a ground color of light tan to light brown with irregular dark spots and bars when warm, they darken considerably when cold. When cold they may be nearly black. Then the darker markings are all but indiscernable.

Changing habitat conditions have also taken a toll on the southern populations of the marbled salamander, Ambystoma opacum. I know this from personal experience.

Both Bishop (Handbook of Salamanders) and Conant (A Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians of Eastern North America) (1947 and 1958 respectively) showed the range of the marbled salamander extending southward on Florida’s Gulf Coast to Tampa Bay. That it extended at least that far south in the mid 1960s is a certainty for Ron Sayers, and I found adults and metamorphs of this beautiful mole salamander under discarded ties beneath a railroad bridge in Lithia Springs.



Between then and today (2013), this still-widespread eastern taxon seems to have lost its foothold on the Florida peninsula, but is still known to occur in suitable habitats on the Florida panhandle. The range of the marbled salamander along the eastern seaboard no longer seems to extend south of southeastern Georgia.

Drought? Development? Climate changes? Other? Or all of those causes listed? I don’t have the ability to assign a cause or causes, but I do know that over the last six decades (since I have been active in the field), the southernmost ranges of at least two amphibian species -- the marbled salamander and the ornate chorus frog -- have been dramatically altered.



In the range maps of the 1958 edition of A Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians of Eastern North America, Roger Conant, meticulous for accuracy, showed ornate chorus frogs, Pseudacris ornata, south along both coasts of Florida to the latitude of Lake Okeechobee.

Since I had never found this frog south of Bradenton on Florida’s Gulf Coast (and had never looked for it on the Caribbean Coast), I queried Mr. Conant about the statement made that the frog was found “through most of Florida."

A group of us had just seated ourselves for lunch at the dining area of Madre Selva Biological Preserve on the Rio Orosa of Amazonian Peru. We had spent most of the morning photographing herps and were discussing what trails we would walk following the meal. A few yards down slope were the waters of a small, quiet inlet.

Suddenly, all talked stopped. A small Suriname toad, Pipa pipa, had just surfaced in the center of the inlet. Action was nearly immediate. Segundo went out one door shedding clothes as he ran. Ian ran out another door. The contest was on. May the best (or at least the fastest) man win!



Segundo hit the silted water from one side and Ian from the other, but either Segundo’s leap had been longer or the toad had been a bit closer to his launching point. When he left the water Segundo was gently clutching the toad, one of the strangest of Amazon amphibians.