Yeah, I never said that the field guides didn't agree with you haha. Most of the soft-soiled areas in my county are on restricted military test sites or restricted management areas where southern hognose snakes and flat woods salamanders are quite common and they (military and US/Florida FWC) don't want people messing with them. I got invited to one ONCE to look for southerns. I didn't find any which makes because everything I have read about them said they are almost always underground in sandy soils and the site use to be a bomb-test site during the Vietnam war (now laser range testing - no explosives) and all the soil was extremely loose.



It seems though that locally (I'm not saying nor did I ever say their entire range), they stick to above-ground and just-under-surface areas. I believe there is a reason for this though. The soil around where I live and look for hognoses is only very sandy for about 8 inches at the most in some public access areas. The ground cover being leafs, branches, and logs is all abundant and deep. The toads that the hognoses prey on burrow very little, they just dig into leaf piles or get under logs and stay put. Even during winter the toads still seem to not burrow. Last night was 27 Fahrenheit and I still found one this morning outside under a piece of placed ply-wood in my yard. The toads, not doing much to burrow, would give to immediate cause for the hognoses to burrow. The toads are right there, so why waste energy if they don't have to. As far as eggs I have found 3 nests, all in some of the sandier areas, all 4-6 inches bellow the soil (never said they don't burrow, just said not much). And then as far as hibernation, there is more than enough root-holes, stump-holes, mouse-holes, pocket-gopher burrows, and gopher tortoise burrows. I have seen several easterns during winter out sunning on gopher tortoise aprons and up-rooted trees facing east into a field to get morning sun.

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