stevethesnakeguy's Favorites

Surprise! And just when you thought my observations couldn't go any further back in time towards the "Dawn of Herpetology", haha! This is 16 year-old Fingers on his very first field trip to the beautiful Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula of eastern North Carolina - a region I immediately fell in love with for it's awesome swampland vistas and abundantly diverse herpetofauna. "Canebrake" Rattlers are quite common in this area - according to my old field notes taken on that "excellent adventure", we found 8 specimens of these impressive Crotalids in all growth stages over a 3-day weekend, half of them "road hunting" in the early evening. Ah, the "good ol' days"!

Talk about "Old School" - this pic is 40 years "Old", and I was a Senior in High "School", haha! I spotted this nice young "Canebrake" with just it's head sticking out of the roadside weeds in East Lake, North Carolina. That's my best friend/cousin/herpetological colleague "Pete" (@jdanch) skulking in the background - hoping for similar luck!

Another "blast from the past" observation that may help to dispel the theory that my entire youth was "misspent", haha! This is me as a 16 year-old punk-ass "herp-kid" helping out as an intern on a presence/absence survey for this NJ State Endangered species back in 1978. I could barely contain my ego (hmm... still have a little trouble with that!) having "shown up" the professional Field Herpetologists who were my "heroes" and had allowed me to tag along - by finding all the Timbers (4 total) and a beautiful, 36" adult male Copperhead that fine day... well, that was at least until the moment I pulled a 5-foot Northern Black Racer out of a deep crevice by it's tail. That smug, glorious feeling faded away real fast and was replaced with red-faced embarrassment as I heard a distant voice call out - "Hey! Don't hold a Black Racer like that..." as it reared back, did a full "u-turn" in mid-air and bit me hard, smack in the middle of my nose! Bled like a fool for almost a half hour - and all my "big time" pro mentors nearly fell down the rockslide laughing their butts off!!! It all came back and "bit" me again the following Monday, when I showed up at school with my black 'n blue schnozz, with 6 perfect rows of teeth-marks emblazoned right across it! Got my hump busted about it for at least 2 weeks - even by some of my teachers, haha! A few wiseguy kids even wrote stuff like "Good luck, Snakeface", etc. in my yearbook (see additional photos). Still cracks me up!

Found this specimen a while back and thought it looked really odd for A. americanus (Hence why I photographed it). Coming back to it now with a bit more knowledge I can see it shows structural characteristics more like the Canadian Toad--Two closely-raised ridges between the eyes forming a blunt crest. The wart and colour patterning also look different and give off a slightly different impression.
That being said, I still have little-familiarity with this species. Plus these aren't known from here in Ontario. Looking forward to any thoughts and input

Found in the stomach of a stocked brown trout. Submitting on behalf of someone else. Only 5 salamander species range in the area mudpuppies, spotted salamander, eastern red backed salamander, central newt, and blue spotted salamanders. The lack of apparent gills leads me to central newts. Let me know if you think otherwise

Observed crossing sand road in Sand Prairie habitat (see other pics). There is a theory that this is an introduced population, as this species was not recorded in extreme eastern Illinois prior to 1980. Many believe this is not the case, as there are similar natural populations in other counties not far to the West.