nanotyrannus's Favorites

Was lucky enough to have an encounter I'll never forget while leaving AWR just after sunset. While slowly driving past a road that was gated off, I noticed some slight movement about 100 yards past the gate. I pulled out my binoculars and was delighted to see the bright orange radio collar I had been searching for for the past three days. Desperate to snap a picture, I got out of my car and attempted to balance my binoculars on the hood of my car as a makeshift scope/distance lens for my camera. After about two minutes of struggling and over 100 blurry photos of nothing, I managed to snap the first slide seen here. During this balancing act, it was lost on me that I had to keep zooming my camera out, not in, as the wolf moved closer and closer. I started hearing a high-pitched yapping noise I didn't initially attribute to the wolf and finally looked up to see how close the wolf had gotten. There were about 20 yards, a gate, and my car between me and the wolf, and it was still approaching. The sun had fully set about 20 minutes prior and it was getting dark quickly so I was heavily relying on the night vision functionality of my outdated, point-and-shoot camera. I caught the gleam of the wolf's eyes as it stared me down from about 10 yards away and can safely say I've never felt a feeling quite like that. I heard more high-pitched yapping to my left and saw a second set of eyes staring me down from about 15 yards out on an adjacent perpendicular road. I didn't notice at the time due to the darkness, but my camera caught another wolf even further off in the distance, probably about 30 yards out. It was at this point I heard even more yapping from even further left and turned to see (what I thought to be) a third wolf 10 yards away, on the same road as me, with no barriers between us. And in that instant, my camera died. In a testament to the night vision mode on my camera, the pictures I captured don't do it justice just how dark things were. The car was off and I had left my phone and flashlight in the car in my haste to snap a picture so once my camera went out, I couldn't even make out the silhouette of the wolf right in front of me. This was pretty chilling as you can imagine, so I quickly got back into my car and flicked the headlights on just in time to catch the wolf on my road jogging off to join the others. Surreal experience.

Summary: four total wolves seen and heard calling, at least two of which wearing radio collars

We (Karin, Nils, Anja and I) were hiking up Nahal David towards the waterfall when we noticed that 2 people (warden/researcher) were shouting at us 'namer/leopard!" and motioned us to turn back on the trail, we did, but I managed to to look over my shoulder and took this picture. This is a scan of the original slide.

The last leopard in Israel was seen in 2010/11 in the northern Arava. (Granit, B. 2016; https://www.birds.org.il/en/article/id/844)

This rattlesnake was found at a plant in Corrigan, Texas at 10:15 PM. It is believed that this specimen was transported to this location unintentionally. Workers at this site claim to come from southern or more western regions where this organism most likely crawled into the undercarriage of a vehicle and finally exited in east Texas. The species was terminated due to its displacement in the region. The temperatures were slowly dropping into the 70s so he was coiled up under some pipes to help regulate body temperature.

FINALLY! an alive spotted salamander! I have been trying to find an alive one for weeks but only found DORS like https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/196703792 this observation. Today was also my last chance to find one, the roads didn’t seem active so I didn’t have much hope but luckily turned this guy up before he got hit

This snake was picked up on the sidewalk outside of the Science building on the Univeristy of Texas at Tyler campus in 2003. The campus has changed greatly since then. Dave Bolanowski picked it up and brought it in. It was raining hard and had been for a few days so it was forced up to the surface. We took the pictures inside because of the hard rains outside.

After this copperhead (right) envenomated my dog, we found the scarlet snake (left) that came out of the copperhead's nest. Bet the scarlet snake had a nice snack! We gladly let the scarlet snake go on its merry way to help control the copperhead population. (The dog was fine after some Benadryl and antibiotics.)