Ontario's Herpetofauna

Spring and summer of 2018 were amazing. I saw some incredible herps within Ontario, which you can see in my previous blog posts on the 2018 season. Fall was slightly different. There were still amazing reptiles and amphibians seen, but they were not from Ontario! Travels took me to the west in Canada and all the way to Greece where I had the privilege of observing some of their native herps. In early fall, I travelled to British Columbia for the Canadian Herpetological Society conference. A group of friends and I were scheduled to be there for the weekend, but headed out to the province a few days early to try and do some hiking and herping of our own before the conference started. After landing in BC, we headed straight for the Okanagan Valley. Probably the coolest observation of the trip was on our drive, and it wasn't even a herp. It was a MOUNTAIN LION! The big beautiful animal was sitting on the edge of a major highway and all our passengers in the car got to catch a glimpse o...

Again, it has been far too long since my last post. Especially considering this is a continuation of it. I apologize to those of you who were expecting it sooner. I guess sometimes life gets busy and you lose track of time! Anyhow, in the last post I left you off ending my trip to Pelee Island where we saw an incredible array of species. With a special highlight being the 3 Blue Racers! If you haven't read the first part I strongly encourage you to go back and read it before this one (here is the link:  https://herpingontario.blogspot.ca/2017/10/an-incredible-week-of-ontario-herping.html ). So now we are off the island, fueling up the car for the 3 hour drive home. Taylor and I get to talking and start discussing places we will be passing on the drive home. And before you know it, we of course have a herp detour planned. We set off to the county of Middle Essex in search for an endangered turtle. A week or so before this, I had previously seen over 13 adult Spiny Softshell ...