Ontario's Herpetofauna

By far the highlight of the trip were the last few days. In South Florida we spent our last day and night looking for a few natives we wanted to see and then mostly invasives. Here's what we found: Corn Snake Green Iguana Three-striped Mud Turtle Florida Cricket Frog Blind Snake Brown Anole Knight Anole Knight Aole Cuban Treefrog Brown Basilisk Tokay Gecko - juvenile Tokay Gecko - juvenile Then, on our last day, the magic happened. We had all but given up on finding an Eastern Indigo Snake but decided to give a search in one last ditch effort before heading home on the long 24 hour drive. And boy was that the best decision ever! Not long into our search Taylor turned up this massive 6.5 foot female Eastern Indigo Snake! Eastern indigo Eastern Indigo Eastern Indigo Eastern Indigo The story that accompanies finding this Indigo is a great one that I will have to post about again sometime. T...

During the middle of our stay we herped Central Florida for a day and then went down to the Everglades to look for reptiles and amphibians there. Unfortunately we had some very cold weather and didn't find as many species as expected in the glades.  Here's what we found: Blue Tail Mole Skink Blue Tail Mole Skink Eastern Narrow-mouthed Toad Florida Sand Skink Southern Black Racer Florida Cottonmouth Everglades Racer Peninsula Cooter Add caption We also had some neat bird observations - here are a few I was able to capture on camera Gallinule Add caption And then back to herps... American Alligator American Crocodile Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake - juvenile recently hit but still alive on the road American Alligator - juvenile American Alligator - juvenile Chicken Turtle Eastern Gartersnake R. Wolfe

It's been a while since my trip to Florida but I figured making a post about it now is better than never. It would be extremely long if I wrote about it so I will mostly just post the pictures. Back in December my friend Taylor and I went on a road trip down to the sunshine state. We had our route planned out and our target species in mind. Leaving early in the morning we had a 24 hour drive ahead of us.  After 12 hours we made a stop in the North Carolina Sandhills at night in attempt to find an Eastern Tiger Salamander. We met up with friends from the area and went out into the dark forest. Unfortunately, the weather hadn't been right and the area was too dry so no Tigers were turned up. We did however find a few lifers: Broken-striped Newt Carpenter Frog After a few hours in the Sandhills, we continued on our way to Central Florida to search the Xeric habitat for snakes. On our first night in Central Florida we found several lifers, with my favorit...