Field Herp Forum

I will actually be in Silver Springs FL from Feb 13-18. I will have from about 9-5 to do some herping on that Thurs, Fri, and Mon. I have already gotten a few tips (Thanks Bill!) but will welcome any more for that area or within a reasonable driving distance. I was also curious if anyone wanted to m...

One day several years ago (like everyone else's story starts) I was hiking up a mountain side in northern NJ looking for prospective timber rattlesnake dens. I was in an area with some open canopy so there was a good amount of grasses growing on the forest floor. I caught some movement waving around...

Really neat shots of the lizards and sidewinders partially buried in the sand. You must have some good eyes. How many of those did you find because of tracks or disturbance in the sand? Thanks for sharing

Approaching from below is often helpful. This can across taxa. When getting baby terrestrial turtles to eat off tongs, they are much more receptive at first when the prey is on the ground rather than "magically" hanging in the air. You may wonder why I feed baby turtles from tongs. The answer is so...

I have never attempted to maintain any snakes on mouse tails, I have never given more than two. I think it works by either triggering their digestive system and appetite or by showing the snake that mice are in fact a food source. If it doesn't work the first one or two times, I move onto a differen...

Bill,
I totally forgot to mention the braining part, I do that as well and can definitely be successful. I have never tried boiling a pinky, interesting idea. Some species are just easy, 90% of my coxi eat f/t without any tricks.

Like Kelly, I have never been able to get a non-eating snake to eat by tease feeding. They strike the pinky for sure, but never ever hold on for me. I do have a friend that currently has to tease feed his rhino rat exactly like Bill wrote about. My schedule trying to feed hatchlings (I currently onl...

Wow!! That is exciting stuff. Its too bad its December and I live in CT because all I want to do is go out in the field right now.

One of the concerns or arguments for not providing water is that they could knock over the bowl and dampen the bedding. I check all of my animals every three days or more during this time, so that would not be an issue. I would simply replace the bedding. Isnt the easy solution to the above to use ...

My wife will be going to Ocala in February for work for a few days. I am trying to figure out if it is worth me going as well. Are there any herps to be found that time of year near there? If I go, I will have the days to myself so will need to occupy my time. I have been to south FL many times duri...

Lots of great tips already mentioned. The only thing I have to add is all the national parks close EARLY. That means no night hiking there. So either plan on roadcruising or plan on staying at a lodge/hotel/camp with their own property. National Parks also don't like hooks.

As far as i know, there were no abnormal signs that my friend saw before death. Tortoise was eating and acting as usual. Thats why I immediately questioned the fatty liver diagnosis. I did send him a link, not sure if he read it yet. Would be better if he joined this discussion.

Again, all great thoughts and responses. The liver was white. I'll send a link to this thread to my friend and see if he wants to chime in. Im not really sure why I haven't already. Jimi, you brought up something that I thought about when I was typing my last response: pesticides. Some store bought ...

Thanks for your input. Jimi, he knew the risks going with a non-herp vet. He has a close relationship with her and got it done for free, within 24 hours, and was involved. And I wouldn't mind your "ignorant" speculation, because I doubt it would be ignorant at all. I am open minded and like to hear ...

A friend of mine just recently had a spider tortoise die. He had it necropsied by a vet who does not have much experience with reptiles. She determined the cause of death to be fatty liver. My friend was there and the liver was fatty and discolored. I am skeptical if that was the true cause of death...

Is Hydrogen peroxide better at disinfecting than chlorhexidine? I use chlorhexidine pretty regularly to clean enclosures and water bowls. I have used it to soak a snake and turtles directly before so it seems safe.

When I used to work at a pet shop, I made a paludarium with a 55 gallon that housed green tree frogs, anoles, and fire belly toads pretty successfully. I think we may have even had a few newts in there occasionally. We were conscious of feeding both during the day and after all the lights were out. ...

Thanks Kelly for your always present good advice. I will definitely stay on top of them. I will be getting some hatchling henkeli in the near future, and don't want to have to worry about them if I go away for a few days. (Also hoping to hatch my own sikorae this year). One of the perks of keeping r...

Does anyone here have experience with misting systems? I want to use it for Uroplatus and I have a few questions: What is your preferred brand? From a little bit of searching it seems like MistKing gets the most attention Can I use regular tap water through it? My water is kind of hard. I know every...

A cheap alternative to thermostats are dimmer switches that you can plug something into. They are under $15 at the big box stores. They have to be monitored more closely than a traditional thermostat, but I have had good luck with them as long as the room temp doesn't swing too much. I am sure every...

I have been way less active lately, but not because of other media, because of personal time. I just wanted to say I actually like the posts NOT from my area better. Living vicariously. Why would I look at pictures of herps that I can go and look at in real life? I prefer the pics of the ones that I...

Update: Thanks for the advice everyone. Unfortunately I didn't fully take it. I made it drier than in the past, but I still went above the 1:1 ratio with water. I just cant believe how dry 1:1 is. I just went over a friends house and felt up his vermiculite that he made up and has success with, and ...

Question for people that use vermiculate: Do you do the 1:1 weight ratio? I just weighed it out for the first time in m y life for some snake eggs and it is way drier than I have ever used before. I would ususally just wet it down and then squeeze out thw the water. I didnt have success with this pa...

Narrowfellow, I did not read the paper, only the abstract you posted. Can you explain how you determined the strikes were " cases of “mistaken identity,” in which the python initiated a strike at a potential prey item but aborted its predatory behavior prior to constriction and ingestion", as oppose...

Looks like a great trip with great finds. The write up on your website is extremely informative. I hope to visit that part of the world in the next couple of years so I will definitely revisit your info when the time comes. Thanks for sharing

Those river otters must have been a real treat and it looks like you got some good views. The second butterfly is stunning.

I believe your treefrog is Trachycephalus typhonius (was venulosus) and your toad is a Cane toad Rhinella marinus

I guess I should add in both of my situations, all adults will be moved. This is not a "I have a female and friend has a male" kind of thing. There are also no known or expected morphs to come from any of this. Who gets first pic (which likely wont matter but you never know), the owner or borrower?

Hey everyone, its been a little while since I was on here. Anyone ever been involved with a breeding loan? I am likely to get involved with 2, I will be the loaner with one friend and the loanee with another. Is there some general standard about who gets what? I was thinking of just splitting any of...

I never even thought to freeze them. Is it really just as simple as putting live ones in a bag and then into the freezer? How long will they keep for, same as any other meat product?

These have been spoken for.

I have way too many dubia roaches at the moment. I have an adult colony of 10 males and 30 females and a few hundred small nymphs from just born to about 3/4". If someone wants to paypal me $20 to cover shipping/box etc they are yours.

Here is copulation out in the open as found with visible hemipenes as requested:

WOW! Those are some beautiful snakes. I know very little about Mexican herpetofuana, and have never heard of either, so thanks for sharing!

Thanks for taking us along on this trip! Your writing is very entertaining and of course the pictures are great. Its amazing that something like an Emerald tree boa was just found for the first time, and so close to camp. Do their eyes shine like the Amazon tree boas?

Another great post from Peru! Thanks for sharing. I cant stop looking at that cribo, and I am also very jealous of your Cruziohyla. I wonder why the tried and true method of collecting moths here didn't work out for you there.

I realize I am late to the party, but here are some blue spot eggs. Well, at least they are laid like blue spots, I cant say if there is any Jeff influence or not. http://i250.photobucket.com/albums/gg246/yousuckk77/IMG_0126_zpsilfekqhw.jpg you can see the top egg was infertile. http://i250.photobuc...

I was going to say something similar to what Kelly said, but she said it way more eloquently than I ever could have so: ditto what Kelly said. To measure that marbled in retrospect, just hold your hand in the same position it was, and measure to the points on your hand it reached. For future referen...

Thanks Regal, that is an awesome enclosure.

Regal, that is a very nice looking enclosure. Can you give some details about the materials used. You wouldn't do it again because it was too much work to build, or keep up?

mtratcliffe wrote: Well, sounds like it was a good trip still! Where did you go kayaking?

A small park right in Hollywood called West Lake park. You can canoe through mangroves. I didn't see any herps while there, but I keep going back in hopes of spotting a salt marsh snake.

My canefield day was my only dedicated herp day, but yeah I did a bunch of other outdoor things with family- airboat, kayaking, and the shark valley bike trail. I saw the usual south florida herps- alligators, red belly turtles, cooters, softshells, green iguanas, curly tail lizards, anoles, and one...

...king snakes...have been being turned up left right and center these past few weeks by some people I know down there... Are there still a lot of people collecting what they find here? And to what end? Or is it more observing, photographing and releasing? I was only planning on photographing. If a...

I was going to comment also on the species above, timbers and copperheads in the northeasten USA. I always GUESSED they were doing it because of the limited shared(seasonally) habitat, and not because of any of the behaviors you mentioned.

Not sure if this person still does this or participates in this forum, but check this thread out:

viewtopic.php?f=35&t=5180&hilit=zonata

I am also considering outdoor enclosures. It seems like a good way to go but as I am also in CT, the 4' frost line is a big concern. I cannot dig so deeply. I would like to put out an enclosure with European Legless lizards but have yet been unable to convince myself of how I could keep the frost t...

That's funny you say that, I was in the canefields in March several years ago and found everything BUT a king. That is the one reason I would go there, kind of a redemption trip.

I am going to be in south Florida (Hollywood) this coming weekend and will have a few hours during the day next Monday to do some herping. My options were going to be head north to the canefields for some flipping or south to ENP for some daytime cruising/hiking. Obviously the weather of that day wi...

I use sphagnum in most of my enclosures, mostly inside humid hides. I used sphagnum I purchased at home depot for a long time without many issues. I recently started using the exo terra sphagnum that comes in a brick. It initially seemed nicer- fluffier and cleaner, the HD stuff would come with twig...

I will second number 1 above, as well as number 3 to cover all bases.

Thanks Reptologist. Is the pond you built the one in your wood turtle enclosure, or a separate one? If separate, do you have pics? Were the minnows breeding in there or you just kept it stocked and fed them off.