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Buck_99
Moderator
Joined: 03 Nov 2006
Posts: 1233
Location: Midlothian, VA
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 Posted: Mon May 19, 2008 10:57 am Post subject: Va Herp Society Annual Spring Survey Pics (DUW) - Part 1 |
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My 9-year old daughter Livie and I went on a herping trip this weekend to southeast Virginia. We camped out at Newport News Park on Friday and Saturday nights. This is a great location for cottonmouths. On Saturday we were on one of four teams that surveyed Colonial National Historical Park in Yorktown. We found an abundance of snakes: 55 individuals covering seven species...and that's only the ones we caught. We're not permitted to count the ones that got away, and there were several of those. We also found some skinks and turtles, but surprisingly we found not a single amphibian. With diseases wiping out whole populations of wild amphibians, this complete lack of amphibians in otherwise perfect habitat is alarming.
Here we are with some eastern box turtles:
Here are some worm snakes. We found 32 of these. With the recent storms in the area (the ones that produced tornadoes in Suffolk), there were many trees down. Just peel back a little bit of bark and voila!
(check out the irridescence on that last one...of course it's brighter in person).
Rough earth snake (a smooth earth snake doesn't have keeled scales):
Liv getting down and dirty to ferret out skinks:
A 5-lined skink:
Ring neck snakes were also in large supply...we caught them by the handful:
Finally some big snakes showed up. Here we have both a 4'11" black rat snake (foreground), and a northern black racer:
Here the racer is in the foreground:
A baby box turtle:
An adult box turtle with nice colors and a cool pattern on his head:
All eight turtles we found were male, which was a bit disquieting.
A northern brown snake:
A rough green snake:
The same rough green snake in his natural element:
Herping all day works up a hearty appetite, and nothing satisfies your hunger like a little live seafood:
Part 2 will cover pictures from Newport News Park.
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magana559
Joined: 29 Sep 2007
Posts: 753
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| Posted: Mon May 19, 2008 5:58 pm Post subject: |
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LMAO On The Last pic! 
Great Herps!
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dragon2285
Joined: 25 Mar 2008
Posts: 188
Location: N.Virginia
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| Posted: Mon May 19, 2008 10:07 pm Post subject: |
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catch and release??
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MikeandSlick
Joined: 07 Aug 2007
Posts: 229
Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
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| Posted: Mon May 19, 2008 11:04 pm Post subject: |
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For being patternless, that racer sure is nice-looking. I like those big, uniform scales. Good specimens all around.
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PyMama
Moderator
Joined: 10 Oct 2006
Posts: 1646
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| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 1:56 am Post subject: |
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Awesome Buck...wow a bunch of snakes....cool!
Kuddos for Livie...I love it.
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Buck_99
Moderator
Joined: 03 Nov 2006
Posts: 1233
Location: Midlothian, VA
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| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 10:17 am Post subject: |
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| dragon2285 wrote: | | catch and release?? |
Always. Occasionally if there's an issue with identification we'll bag them and take them back to the central meeting location, but I had my Peterson's field guide on me so we didn't need to do that. Either way they're eventually released exactly where they're found. We record GPS location of all captures.
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Number 2
Joined: 29 Jul 2007
Posts: 480
Location: Kaukauna, WI
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| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 1:56 pm Post subject: |
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| Buck_99 wrote: | | dragon2285 wrote: | | catch and release?? |
Peterson's field guide. |
Where did you buy that!!! I need one! I'll search for it later.
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Buck_99
Moderator
Joined: 03 Nov 2006
Posts: 1233
Location: Midlothian, VA
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