Field Herp Forum

I saw my first (and only) San Gabriel salamanders almost a year ago now in late January - as Jonathan mentions, the talus-slope habitat is very dry and it took me several failed attempts to actually find them. Conditions were pretty wet when I finally found mine. I would say you want to go as soon a...

On the subject of the SLO rubber boa, looks like someone found a dead one and collected it! https://twitter.com/snakeymama/status/1 ... 9947969536

Thanks Grant! In the time since writing this post I've gotten a bit better at taking these kinds of photos, though I still have a very long way to go. The #1 thing I discovered that could have been the answer to this whole thread is FLASH. A few months back I purchased a small Godox external flash f...

Nice post, always a welcome sight to see posts with crisp images and some story telling still being posted on the forum. What image hosting platform you used for the larger images ? I use flickr but hate the tags and stuff that comes under each photo. Thanks! I actually did use flickr for those. I ...

Mine is on-camera. I've been told it's better to do it with a transmitter, but without a decent autofocus that would be impossible for me to do alone, and my current main night photos lens doesn't have any autofocus at all, so I'm sticking with that for the foreseeable future.

Thanks all! Vipera - I assume you mean my flash setup? I use a Sony a6300 mirrorless camera, so I have a Godox TT350 external flash with a moderately sized rectangular flash diffuser that I attach for night cruising. Critically for mirrorless, this flash has TTL/auto-exposure support. My old cheaper...

Late September is probably the best time out of that timeframe to road cruise, to be fair - but the more time you can do it the better your odds! So if you do end up getting access to a car earlier, I wouldn't hesitate to check out Anza-Borrego... I know if I lived as close to it as San Diegans do I...

This weekend I headed out from southern California on a very brief trip to southeast Arizona with my friend James. On our last trip out here several weeks ago, we discussed possibly scheduling a last-minute repeat trip if rain forecasts aligned with a weekend to try and find, among other things, the...

Awesome, I'm from the San Diego area and I'm sure you will enjoy it there! Welcome to California! August and September aren't the best for herping in my opinion (going to be perfectly honest, that's definitely my least favorite time of the year in general in southern California) as they are at the e...

Woah that is a crazy looking one with the white head! Awesome find!

I've seen about half a dozen shovelnose snakes total (half Mojave, half Colorado Desert) and all but one have been road cruised at night. The one exception was a complete fluke where I pulled over for a desert iguana and, while the iguana had disappeared, found a shovelnose snake crawling around in ...

To the author, nice post :thumb: It was a tough year for rattlesnakes. You did good :beer: I tried my ass off for a shovelnose! No dice Thanks! I think I have an allotted 3 shovelnoses per year. Last year I had 3 of the Colorado desert ones and no Mojave, this year I had 3 Mojaves and no Colorado d...

The last few months I've been trying to get better at taking wide-angle photographs of herps with the habitat visible. These have always been the kind of photos I see from others that impress me the most. It's been challenging, and while I've had some luck and I am definitely improving over time, I'...

So I have no idea about the natural history of octopuses, but in case it helps: I would imagine it would be easier in the winter because that's when the big low tides are during the day. That would of course also be when the storms are. As for my finds, the two I've seen at Malibu lagoon were last O...

Jeff - I've never thought to look for brush lizards on telephone poles. I'll have to try that next time I'm in the Mojave. I imagine I've probably passed them in bushes before but just missed them. This one in a smoke tree just looked like a suspiciously offset branch when I spotted it. I flipped th...

Unless the lens is really dirty, I wouldn't expect it would make a huge difference. I'm mostly having to clean my sensor of dust specks, but that results in spots on my image rather than an overall reduction in quality.

With the temperatures cooling down, I thought I'd head out for the day to the deserts of Riverside county to find a few species I've missed so far before the reptile season is behind us. I originally had wanted to do some birding as the first stop, but this of course was derailed when I instead deci...

Are you kin to George Heaton of Altoona, PA?

No, sorry - at least not that I'm aware of.

The Mohawk fringe-toed was really fun to find. The only downside is that now that it's been split, I can't figure out how to find the species it originally was!

I don't know anything about bites or if they're safe to handle unfortunately, but I've never heard of anyone being hurt by an octopus in southern California. I double checked and I've seen a dead pacific red caught in sea anemones up in SLO county, but that's a bit far north. I'm sure there are twin...

I've seen a few at Malibu Lagoon state beach, which is just generally a great tidepool location for LA county. On one occasion I found one half-buried (but very alive) in a shallow pool, and another was flushed out from under a rock when I walked by. These both would have been lesser two-spot octopu...

Speckled is a nice find! I'd love to see one in JT sometime.

What in particular are you hoping to see? Palm oases are generally good habitat to check out, especially in Anza-Borrego where there are peninsular species (and the shade is nice).

Awesome find, and a beautiful snake in either lighting. I've seen great basin rattlesnakes in Utah as a kid but still need to get photos of one myself.

Hi all, Now that I've finally made an account I thought I'd share some of my best finds and photos from the last year. As an introduction, I'm a grad student from southern California (right now LA county to be specific). I really got into finding reptiles last spring when I realized that it was in f...