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...

May rolled around intriguingly quickly in 2018. But it brought some incredible herping moments with it!  My first herp adventure was right on May 1st, where I went on a search for Ontario's endangered Spotted Turtle with a close friend of mine. Though we didn't find our target this time around, we did see an extremely red-coloured Eastern Garter Snake, and a lovely Snapping Turtle. Eastern Gartersnake A few other trips in early May to a couple of local gold mines produced many breeding frog species, and some basking snakes along a creek! The highlights were a particularly pretty American Toad, an in-situ Northern Water Snake, and a handful of endangered Queen Snakes. American Toad Northern Watersnake Queensnake By the second week of May, I had began working as an intern at Ontario Nature. I was desperately excited because they were hoping to use my herp knowledge and enthusiasm in surveys for species of reptiles and amphibians across Ontario. And it didn't disappoint. Right...