This Western Diamondback Rattlesnake (Crotalus atrox) was one of two that startled me in my first four trips to the La Sal del Rey tract of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, in Hidalgo County, TX. I encountered N another one at the same preserve two years later, while birding with my friend Bill Haley from the Tennessee Aquarium.
Photos below marked with an N(for "new") are the most recently added ones.
N When I was young I always wanted a pet Green Snake because they eat insects rather than cuter, more expensive vertebrate prey. Good thing I didn't get one; they often refuse to eat in captivity. I spotted this one, a Keeled Green Snake (Opheodrys aestivus), in front of my car on a road in Mississippi, introduced it to some folks who happened to be nearby, and the released it in a patch of weeds.
Contrary to popular opinion, not every watersnake is a venomous Water Moccasin or Cottonmouth. This one is, though. The species is common in the North Carolina coastal plain but absent from most of the Piedmont.
Scarlet King Snake. In April 1999, I accompanied several folks from the Carolina Butterfly Society on a field trip to the Sandhills Gamelands in Richmond County, NC. At one point during the trip, after we had just seen a Carolina Roadside-Skipper (Amblyscirtes carolina), I saw a Five-Line Skink (either Eumeces fasciatus or E. inexpectatus) squirm under a piece of wood on which Jeff Pippen was standing. Jeff moved, and I flipped the piece of wood, which had not only the skink under it but also this beautiful snake!
Harry LeGrand found this Pine Snake crossing a road in the Sandhills Gamelands a few hours before we found the above-mentioned Scarlet Kingsnake.
This immature Texas Indigo Snake turned up just outside the volunteer housing trailers where I spent the summer at Santa Ana NWR in Hidlago County, TX in August 2000. The hands holding it belong to Mike Quinn, LRGV ace butterflier and now Texas' official state entomologist.
Doing its best impression of a submerged stick, this Checkered Garter Snake lay in ambush in the man-made pond at the Brooks County TXDOT rest stop on US route 83.
Northern Ring-necked Snake. I have a habit of falling behind groups on hikes, as I keep getting distracted, flipping over logs and taking pictures and such. In September 1999, we took visiting speaker Jonathan Losos on a field trip to the Blue Ridge Parkway and went hiking. The rest of the group pulled ahead of me, as usual. I found this nice little critter under a rock at some point after they passed beyond shouting distance.
Durham birder Tom Krakauer is holding this Black Racer, which we found on Will Cook's March 2000 birding trip to Knap of Reeds Creek in Durham County, NC. Tom insists that it's a Black Rat Snake, but the two herpetologists I've asked both think it's a racer...
This Texas Horned Lizard turned up in the trailer park (Rocket Mobile Trailer Village) where I lived while working on Fort Bliss, NM. Since the trailer park was overrun by cars, dogs, kids, and other threats to survival of horny toads, we released her in a quiet park a few miles away. NThis baby was in the middle of a National Wildlife Refuge, so I just scooted it off the road.
Fairchild Tropical Gardens in south Florida is overrun with Common Iguanas escaped from local zoos and the pet trade. They are native to Central America. The adults usually dive into the water when humans approach, but this one let me get pretty close.
Lizards in the genus Sceloporus are very photogenic. Don't believe me? Check out my pictures of male and female Eastern Fence Lizard from North Carolina; Western Fence Lizard from Roseville, CA; Rose-bellied Lizard, from Santa Ana NWR in Hidlago County, TX; Mesquite Lizard, from the West Lake tract of the LRGV NWR in Willacy County, TX; and Yarrow's Spiny Lizard from Carr Canyon, AZ.
I was surprised that this young Brown Anole posed so cooperatively for a photo without running or even looking at me; after taking the picture, I noticed that it had been staring directly at a black snake in a shrub only a foot away! Like the above species, it is native to Cuba, not the US.
N The only anole native to the United States is the Green Anole. It can turn brown, but the Brown Anole can never turn green...
N In addition to the Brown Anole, the Knight Anole has also colonized south Florida from Cuba via the pet trade. So has the Bark Anole, formerly endemic to Hispaniola. Even the Central American Brown Basilisk can be found down there now!
Florida Softshell Turtle. At Fairchild Tropical Garden I saw loads of these guys swimming around like alligators, just their eyes and nostrils above the water's surface. I spotted this one far from the water while I was riding a bike around the 15-mile loop at Shark Valley in Everglades National Park. It was probably a female looking for a place to lay its eggs.
This Eastern Mud Turtle was hauled out near a little stream along the same abandoned railroad bed in Durham County where I took the above picture of the Eastern Fence Lizard. Not on the same day, though.
I saw Texas Tortoise (Gopherus berlandieri) surprisingly often in August 2000 in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, including three just on the driving loop of Laguna Atascosa NWR. This one was near the Rio Grande in the Boca Chica tract of the LRGV NWR, in Cameron County, TX.
Diamondback Terrapin is a species in decline as its salt-marsh habitat gets eaten up by rampant developments on the US Atlantic and Gulf Coasts. This is the only one I've ever seen. It was trying to cross US route 21 outside of Hunting Island State Park; I carried it across the highway and down into the marsh on the other side.
Like the Diamondback Terrapin above, I rescued this Eastern Box Turtle as it tried to cross a busy road. It was in the middle of Old Oxford Highway, a two-lane country road in Durham County, NC.
My friends Norm Budnitz and Norm Douglas and I laughed when we found this Green Tree Frog at Old Hope Valley Farm, an NCSU property near Jordan Lake in Chatham County, NC. It stood out ridiculously against its dead-weed background, its color seemingly advertising it rather than camouflaging. Then, when we walked by a second time on our way back, we found four others that we had somehow not seen, all within a few feet of this one!
This Brimley's Chorus Frog hopped out of the grass in the Green Swamp on the annual Duke biodiversity class field trip. We go there mainly for the carnivorous plants; see my plant photos .
My nature-nut pal Cait Coberly and I found a few pairs of Upland Chorus Frogs (or maybe Southern) in amplexus in the wheel-rut puddles of a dirt road along Old Oxford Highway in Durham County, NC one Tuesday afternoon in February 2001. We found a Southern Cricket Frog later that same afternoon. Cait's hands are in both photos.
Another naturalist friend, Tracy S. Feldman, took this photo of a Cope's Grey Treefrog on the wall of his house one night.
N The common native frog of south Texas is the Rio Grande Leopard Frog. This one lives in a beautifully landscaped rest area on US route 281 in Brooks County.
N One of the more common toad species down there is the Texas Toad; I lucked into an army of thousands of them crossing route 285 west of Falfurrias during a downpour one afternoon.
This American Toad is thinking "you can't see me, I'm invisible..." I found this one with Cait too, a few months after the frogs mentioned above.
N One of the world's most notorious invasive exotic species is the Cane Toad, also known as the Giant Toad or Marine Toad. It's been introduced, mostly by well- meaning but misinformed sugarcane farmers, to Hawai'i, Florida, and Puerto Rico; this mating pair was in south Texas. It's native to Central America.
N The southern Appalachian mountains are full of salamanders. Most of them are Dusky Salamanders, little brown jobs that are nearly impossible to tell apart. Then, to make matters worse, the Imitator Salamander goes around mimicking other species!
Many plethodontids like the Red-backed above lack the usual amphibian larval stage. Not so for ambystomatids like the Marbled Salamander. The adults mate and lay eggs in dry pond beds in the fall; the eggs hatch over the winter as rain and melting snow refill the pond, so the larvae are already swimming by spring.
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