Reptile & Amphibian Forums

and lots of pics to show off. ill start with invertebrates (i hope the pics work)

banana spider

wood louse

black widow

another spider

teeny tiny lil mantis (weird behavior from this one, notice its head is the width of only 3 friction ridges on the hand)

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-Mike Martin
North Carolina

plenty of cuban tree frogs



^i love how they all crammed themselves into the small crack on this sign post in the everglades

squirrel tree frogs (i think)

pig frog

green tree frogs



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-Mike Martin
North Carolina

oops, forgot the greenhouse frog...

back to lizards...

brown anoles

bark anole

green anoles

new subspecies for me (anolis carolinensis seminolis, supposedly very rare in the area we found it)

iguana

broadhead skink (i think)

florida scrub lizard juvie

tropical house gecko hatchling

giant day geckos (my favorite exotics from the trip, adult and hatchling/juvie)


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-Mike Martin
North Carolina

since i forgot the iguana pic

florida box turtle (female)

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-Mike Martin
North Carolina

first AOR of the night, a burmese python (~3 ft, our 3rd found in florida)

corn

rosy rat

garter

smallest crowned snake ive ever seen (hatchling)

green water

red and normal phase salt marsh magrove waters

closeup of red phase

red phase banded water

lots of ringnecks

and the highlight of the trip, a keys EDB (first for all 5 of us on the trip, thats me in the middle pic)



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-Mike Martin
North Carolina

well, as many of you know, south florida was devastated by hurricane wilma. ive made two other trips to south florida in the past year, and the difference after the hurricane was night and day. one lady in the keys that was kind enough to give us a place to stay shared some pics with us of the hurricane damage. she once had a beautiful yard full of plants and trees from her travels around the world, however many of them didnt survive the week or so of standing salt water from the flooding. we bought her a bay rum tree out of thanks for giving us a place to sleep and shower. she was really the most graceful host for a group of 5 dirty, stinky, unshaven guys she had never met before.

heres a couple pics of the hurricane and flooding


^thats the street completely submerged

and what the yard looks like today

and a shot from flamingo, the southern tip of the florida everglades national park accessible by road. took a huge hit from winds and mainly flooding from the hurricane. here is a blurry picture of a few pontoon boats that were rather neatly lifted up into the parking lot at the marina.

fortunately for herpers, unfortunately for the environment, there is now a lot more trash sitting around in the keys. just gotta hunt it out. lots of abandoned vehicles as well. heres a pic of a roadside dump that formed outside of a waste management facility.

on a lighter note, heres me trying to spear the world's largest florida lobster

a gator i forgot to post earlier

and a shot from flamingo, the southern tip of the florida everglades national park accessible by road. took a huge hit from winds and mainly flooding from the hurricane. here is a blurry picture of a few pontoon boats that were rather neatly lifted up into the parking lot at the marina.

hope you enjoyed the pics. i had a blast with these guys, as always, and hope to make another trip soon. hopefully by that time, the residents and environment will have recouperated more from the storm.
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-Mike Martin
North Carolina

Thanks for sharing!
I have a couple questions...

Was this a recent (December) trip?
And...I assume you started in the glades near Miami and proceeded into some of the keys?

yes, this was a very recent trip. dec 15-21.

the trip went everglades->keys->northern lake okeechobee
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-Mike Martin
North Carolina

fantastic trip man! congrats....really liked the phelsumas,and those were very sweet edb shots...hey i don't have a field guide handy...but that looked like a coal skink,do they occur down that far,could it be one of those?...also,how did you determine that red phase water snake to be nerodia fasciata,as opposed to say,compressicaudata(mangrove salt marsh)?wow i wish some people would bag those damn pythons instead of all the native glades herps,you know?probably wouldn't be too hard to resell them/or at least put them up for adoption....ok,getting sidetracked here,lol...nice trip,looks like a good one.

first of all, im pretty sure it was NOT a coal skink, found one of those before i think around the ocala area. didnt quite get it in the pic, but it had a real bright blue tail. not 100% on the ID, but didnt look like any of the 5 lineds. the coal skink ive caught before had a pinkish/redish tail.

as for the pythons, we actually stopped to talk to some of the officers on the refuge about em. this summer a refuge officer told us they shot them on site. now they're actually doing some research on them by chipping them and i guess tracking their movements. sure, they could sell in the pet trade, but X many of them might make their way right back to where they came from. not only that, but im sure they'll have some parasite load, not to mention they tend to have a fairly nasty disposition having grown in the wild. granted that could all be managed in time, but that takes extra blood, sweat, and tears some people might not be willing to put forth.

as for the nerodia fasciata/nerodia compressicauda clarkii, this summer we werent quite positive on how to tell the difference. im sorta new to the compressicaudas, but the more we find the more im learning about them. the friend who organized the trip is real knowledgeable about snakes and after being stumped after one of our summer finds, he pointed out a couple things that set the two apart. first of all, you can notice faint bands in the red phase banded. all mangroves ive seen have been a plain red. also, the bandeds we've found have been larger than the mangroves (which only holds true if youve got big enough of a banded). but the one thing he told me best set them apart, as far as he could tell, was the eyes. mangroves will have black eyes, while the bandeds have a lighter colored iris. and i cant remember for sure, but i think you can also compare the # of supralabial scales if needed, although there might be some overlap in the range of scales they can have in the two species. here is a pic of a red phase fasciata we found during the summer, with banding that is a little more apparent.

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-Mike Martin
North Carolina

i confused the coal skink with a mole skink. but as i said, we werent 100% on the ID. when i go to areas outside the carolinas, i get less sure about IDs, especially on the eumeces.
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-Mike Martin
North Carolina

shoot them burms and chop 'em up for gator food....................

we'd thought of that, actually, but this latest one would have only been a snack for em. would have been retribution for the family of that gator that got eaten and was all over the news a few months ago.

im still dying to cross paths with a truly big one. we heard news of something like a 16 footer being spotted a few weeks ago in the mahogany hammock area. supposedly thats turning into a hotspot for the burms.
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-Mike Martin
North Carolina

i feel that in the near future these things are going to cause a real problem for the herps we all love.................

I have found three live Burmese pythons in the ENP and all of them were near Mahogany Hammock. The largest was 9 feet.
Also found a DOR on US1 at mm 121.

just curious...the burms you have found, both in the ENP and elsewhere, were they located around forested parts? im wondering if and how much these snakes are arboreal. my friend threw out a pretty interesting hypothesis, seeing as all the burms we've found tend to be in forested areas: young ones might tend to be more arboreal to evade certain predators, while the larger ones able to fend for themselves can afford more of a terrestrial/aquatic life.

seeing as mahogany hammock is such a hotspot and it is pretty well forested in that loop was one of the things that first led us to the idea.
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-Mike Martin
North Carolina

Yes and no. The largest one I found (9 feet) was only a hundred yards from the Mahogany Hammock entrance off the Main Park Road and it is pretty woodsy there.
But the two others were found a mile or so East of M.H. where it is mostly sawgrass and scattered hammocks.
All of these pythons were found crossing the road after 9:00 PM.

The DOR (4 footer) was on the shoulder of US1 south of Florida City and it was pretty much sawgrass and canal vegetation in that area. The trees that are there are mostly shrubby in size.

wow, those are some great pictures, looks like you had a wonderful time and got to work out some of your ID skills which is always nice. looks like a lot of fun

the web is toxic if you get it in your eye youe eye will swell shut and when your pores are open and your skin is sweaty the web can cause a rash! the reak bannanas are in costa rica and are only 1" JB

alright. thanks for clearing that up. all i knew was they were of the genus agriopes, only one of us on the trip was an invertebrate person, and i heard the rest of em calling them banana spiders. i do know that they had that one golden strand that felt stronger than any other spider silk ive felt before. i think i remember hearing from someone in the past that they're doing research on these critters too for the strength properties of their silk.
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-Mike Martin
North Carolina