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i enjoyed visiting this forum last winter but have not visited for several months. Been very busy breeding all my colubrids and getting the garden planted. Nearly all my females are done laying and a few have even double clutched already and the garden is in.

Guess it is a good time for things to slow a bit (until the babies start hatching anyway). The native herps are starting to appear now so i hope to make some time for some field herping.

Actually i have seen dozens of Rhabdophis tigrinus already this year while out collecting doongala roots (my favorite tea).
My son was out the other day and says he saw 2 Gloydius and the farmers have just finished filling their rice patties and the frogs are now singing me to sleep every night so I suspect it is a good time for me to get out there and burn some film.
I will post some pics soon.

thanks,
don

Glad to hear your garden and snakes are doing well. My snakes are just getting ready to lay (most of them). I've had some successes and some disappointments this year in the snake room. We've had some crazy weather here in New England. Some days it feels like early spring then it turns around and get August sultry. I expect we'll be getting some field reports from the gang pretty soon. My only field sightings are a few garters and a snapping turtle. Pretty dull.

Best regards
John

>>i enjoyed visiting this forum last winter but have not visited for several months. Been very busy breeding all my colubrids and getting the garden planted. Nearly all my females are done laying and a few have even double clutched already and the garden is in.
>>
>>Guess it is a good time for things to slow a bit (until the babies start hatching anyway). The native herps are starting to appear now so i hope to make some time for some field herping.
>>
>>Actually i have seen dozens of Rhabdophis tigrinus already this year while out collecting doongala roots (my favorite tea).
>>My son was out the other day and says he saw 2 Gloydius and the farmers have just finished filling their rice patties and the frogs are now singing me to sleep every night so I suspect it is a good time for me to get out there and burn some film.
>>I will post some pics soon.
>>
>>thanks,
>>don

i see the regulars are all still chugging along. i was checking out the ratsnake forum and think maybe people just overlook this sub-forum because i see them post a lot of asian stuff over there rather than here. anyway, i look forward to checking out some of your babies this year. I met my numbers goal for production and had to make some adjustments with some of my thayeri and alternas due to mis-sexing problems but overall i am very pleased. I also had a very good boa year and obtained some new python species that paired up nicely for this coming season (especially happy with some amethystines i recently purchased).

My major disappointment was with my Pituophus group. Most of my collection is still too young but the ones i did have that were ready to breed this year showed no interest. I think my males may need to mature one more year. Although I never observed any breeding i did have a few lay infertiles so i will try again next year. I may also try dropping the males down another 5-10 degrees this year to see if that helps.

thanks, don

Yeah, some people don't know about this sub-forum and some prefer to post at the main page. I post on both but enjoy this little enclave because of its quiet. I'll gladly post my hatchlings. It would have been more exciting if I hadn't lost my oldest mandarin female. Her babies probably would have been worth a photo.
Glad to hear your snakes are producing for you. Please post any photos you would like. Amethystines are neat looking snakes. What is their temperment like?

Hang in there with the pits. They are hardy and prolific. They should produce for you eventually.

Best regards
John

sorry to hear about your female mandarin.

on the brighter side of things, it was a good day for me. Today i started getting some eggs hatching. First thing this morning one of my alterna clutches greeted me with a bunch of heads and by days end i had some snow x ghost corns and a melanistic x normal variable pip.

On top of all that, i was out picking my strawberries and decided to clean some leaves from the base of the tiers and i had a snake shoot out. It is only the second one i have seen and am not 100% sure what it is. I believe it is Coluber spinalis but am not familar with them as nobody around here is even familiar with this species.

below is a pic of my alternas hatching and i will start a new thread for the native snake i found so that everyone can confirm what it is.

thanks, Don

Don:
I like those alterna. They're good-looking. Glad to hear you're having good results this year. Always like to see photos of the hatchlings pipping.

I saw your photos above of the local snake. Glad to see Shane could i.d. it for you.

I also saw some herp life today but didn't have a camera. Driving home I saw a turtle in the road. I stopped to look at it and saw that it was a wood turtle. Very nice looking bugger. That's the second one I've seen crossing that road.

Best regards
John

Hey Don, good to see you back! I'm looking forward to seeing some pics from your neck of the world.
I got back from Kyushu a week ago, and I plan to post a decent ratsnake report from there in some sort of timely manner. Terry and I are going to meet up this weekend to see what we can find in southeast Oklahoma.
Hopefully Dinodon is still lurking out there, with some Taiwan finds.......

Shane
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hey shane. I would love to see some of those pics. I looked back through some of the threads and saw that dinodon sort of disappeared there too. Like you said, hopefully he will come back on with a bunch of new stuff.

thanks,
don

Hi Don

Welcome back I used to really enjoy your posts and those of others and the banter from months gone by .. although a lurker and not a poster at the time. Nice one on the breeding and finding time to do the garden too. Look forward to hearing about your adventures in the field as I do for all folks that post on these forums .. living in the UK we are sadly limited to the number of species that are native... Adder, Grass Snake & Smooth Snake (which is extremly rare and it's range is limited to the southern counties)

Sue x

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Hi Sue:

I checked out those nice conspic hatching photos on your website. Very cool.

Regards
John

Yep there pretty special .. would love some of them in my collection in the future.
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