FieldHerpForum

Disclaimer: My DSLR is currently at the shop, so I'm stuck with my old camera, a Canon PowerShot SI5S. As I wrote elsewhere, it's "nice enough for daylight pix, but sucks major <insert your favorite epithet here> for macro photography at night". So please accept my apologies for the even-crappier-than-usual shots

Herps:

A few days after finding the green snake hatchling/stick insect trail and messing up all my own shots, I returned on my own, and lo and behold! found the Cyclophiops major hatchlings again:










Hokou's Gecko, Gekko hokouensis.


Always fun to look for on tree bark (NOT!)



Yet another Japalura (swinhonis, I believe). These guys were sleeping in the reeds everywhere. Very quick to open their eyes when hit by light, but completely immobile until you actually touched them.




Inverts:

I've been fascinated by Walking Sticks since I was a little boy, and every time I stood in front of a phasmid terrarium I had a hard time finding the damn things, and would marvel at how the hell you're supposed to find them in the jungle. True to this, in 20 years of hiking in Taiwan I saw all of two phasmids; both times in highly conspicuous surroundings (on a toilet door and on a little boy's white T-shirt, resp.), never on plants. But then the entomologist who joined our herping group last Saturday showed us how to look for them, and once you know how, suddenly the woods are alive with them!! Within half an hour, I found at least four different species all on my own (none of which I've been able to ID; there are about 15 species here in TW, and many of them look very similar). It was an extra-damn shame not to have my proper macro shooting gear with me, because they have their crypsis down to perfectly mimic even the little black, warty dots on bamboo twigs!! I hope to get better shots soon, though, it's just a short walk from my home.









For scale: this taro leaf is about two feet long







Fishing spider, Dolomedes sp.. Quite a spectacle to watch this large arachnid zip around the water surface and catch other inverts as well as fry. Sorry about the Eye Shine from Hell, couldn't get rid of it.



I'll conclude with the cruel, but picturesque end of a Papilio thaiwanus

Lux tua nos ducat...why isn't that butterfly webbed up? Was it alive when you took the pic?

What's the adult size on Cyclophiops major? Neat snakes. The walking sticks were impressive as well.

-Mike

Those Greater Green Snakes are just jewels...
I wonder if they get chopped by the public as Trimeresurus???
Regards, Bill

That last picture is awesome.

I love the green snakes you found. Thanks for taking photos and posting here. sdm.

Nice post. What do the Green Snakes feed on over there? Do they mainly eat insects like the ones in the states or do they feed on lizards?

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Warren - I'll do my best to try and live up to the expectations


It was a fresh catch, still wiggling. Also, it's quite a large 'fly, so it messed up the net pretty bad.

Bill, the Green Snakes do indeed suffer lots of hatin' from the general populace. But if you don't look closely at the head, the scales, and the general size, and if you don't get to see if there's a white stripe along the body, it's easy to confuse them. They feed mostly on earthworms and insects and grow up to 130 cm (4.26509186 feet).