Some of my finds from 2015(so far)

Bandit · 08-11-15, 07:22 PM

I figured I'd share some of the herps that I've found this year. I haven't had a chance to do as much herping as I would have liked this year, but I have still found some cool stuff. And there's things that I wasn't able to photograph for various reason(lighting, got away too fast, etc). These are all from southern Louisiana. Hope yall enjoy!

A couple of Speckled Kingsnakes

Western Cottonmouth

Texas Ratsnake

Black-Masked Racer

Garter Snake

Some Ribbon Snakes(the first is one of the biggest I've ever seen)

Bandit · 08-11-15, 07:23 PM

A couple of Broad-Banded Water Snakes...these are super common around here, but here are a couple nice ones. The first one is the strangest, yet coolest one I've ever seen.

A large Diamond-Backed Water Snake with a Broad-banded in the background

I wasn't too sure on this guy's ID...I asked around and some people said Plain-Bellied Water Snake and some said Blotched Water Snake. If anyone has suggestions let me know!

Ring-necked Snake

Dekay's Brown Snake

Broad-Headed Snake

Five-Lined Skink

Princess-dad · 10-11-15, 12:55 AM

I could be wrong but I think that Five Lined Skink is hanging out in a patch of American Ginseng .

Doug 351 · 10-11-15, 01:33 AM

OMG....Love seeing the ribbons....those and Western fence lizards are some of my favorites....however...the western fence lizards dont look right to me though...they don't match what I have....so I'm a bit confused.

Bandit · 10-11-15, 08:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug 351

OMG....Love seeing the ribbons....those and Western fence lizards are some of my favorites....however...the western fence lizards dont look right to me though...they don't match what I have....so I'm a bit confused.

Okay I did misidentify... sort of. So they are actually Prairie Lizards (Sceloporus consobrinus). The reason I confused the two was because we used to have Eastern Fence Lizards (Sceloporus undulatus) and Prairie Lizards, however they were reclassified by range, so now all we have are Prairie Lizards. If you look up those two species, you'll see they are very similar. But thanks for catching that. I should've clarified between eastern and western.

Bandit · 08-11-15, 07:23 PM

Green Tree Frog

Leopard Frog

Gray Tree Frog

Common Snapping Turtle

Box Turtle

Southern Painted Turtle that was rescued from the road and relocated

Huge Softshell Turtle

Bandit · 08-11-15, 07:24 PM

And last, but certainly not least, some alligators

**Minkness** · 08-11-15, 07:32 PM

Man...those speckled kings...such awesome pics. Thanks for sharing!

FWK · 08-11-15, 08:12 PM

Awesome post, keep the finds coming. Love the picture of the Black Mask Racer.

The little juvie Water Snake is in fact a Plain Belly (Nerodia erythrogaster), formerly a Yellow Belly (N. e. flavigaster). Blotched Water Snakes (N. e. transversa) are another former subspecies of N. erythrogaster found farther west in Texas.

Do you have any more pictures of the highly aberrant Broadbanded Water Snake? Crazy looking animal. Looks like it has buffet of fish at its disposal.

Bandit · 08-12-15, 09:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FWK

Awesome post, keep the finds coming. Love the picture of the Black Mask Racer.

The little juvie Water Snake is in fact a Plain Belly (Nerodia erythrogaster), formerly a Yellow Belly (N. e. flavigaster). Blotched Water Snakes (N. e. transversa) are another former subspecies of N. erythrogaster found farther west in Texas.

Do you have any more pictures of the highly aberrant Broadbanded Water Snake? Crazy looking animal. Looks like it has buffet of fish at its disposal.

Oh so the Yellow-Bellies were reclassified as Plain-Bellied?

And yeah here's another picture of that Broad-Banded. I've seen a lot of cool ones, but that stripe was just baffling.

Here's a couple other nice Broadbands I've seen this year

And here are a few more cool finds:

A young Ribbon Snake that thought he was a cobra

A (very) pregnant Garter, or at least she was at the time. She would have had her babies by now

And a couple more Speckled Kings

I found this guy last night...one of the downfalls of road cruising. I found him after he had been hit, but he was still alive. I tried bringing him home to see if there was a chance that I could nurse him back to health, but he died a while later.