A site about amphibians, reptiles, and other creepy crawlies
Posted in Amphibians, Conservation, Salamanders on May 20th, 2013
I had the pleasure of meeting some of the members of Hellbender Media recently at a film festival in Portland, Oregon. I noticed they had hellbenders on their t-shirts and stuffed hellbenders on their merchandise table. It turns out that the stuffed hellbenders weren’t for sale (much to my displeasure). Instead the stuffed salamanders were [...]
Posted in Amphibians, Salamanders on May 15th, 2013
I recently returned to my favorite US city, Portland, Oregon, for a visit and while I was there I of course had to visit my favorite city park, Tryon Creek State Natural Area. My hubby and I met up with my good friend the awesome Ranger Christal Florin and went for a hike and some [...]
Posted in Amphibians, Frogs, Reptiles, Snakes, Turtles on May 13th, 2013
As many of you know I’m a field wildlife biologist/herpetologist which means I get to spend a lot of time outside for my job. I’m always coming across fun wildlife and wanted to share with you the latest herps I’ve seen in Wisconsin while either working or playing. All of the following except the paint [...]
Posted in Conservation, Education, Herpetology, Salamanders, Snakes on May 2nd, 2013
This story is a little out of the ordinary for us, since snakes are our normal specialty. After much help and convincing from The Wandering Herpetologist, we decided to make it into a story. We were in Hickman County, Tennessee on a cold rainy morning, we were pretty convinced that it was a dreadful day [...]
Posted in Amphibians, Frogs, Jokes on Apr 28th, 2013
Posted in Frogs, Herpetology, Lizards, Snakes on Apr 26th, 2013
Finally, spring is here! At least it was… Currently just a scarce 10 degrees Celsius but the past week we had a couple days that even reached the 25 degrees. So as it was time to get out and find some reptiles. I visited three areas, the first one especially for vipers, but the weather was [...]
Posted in Amphibians, Frogs on Apr 24th, 2013
This past weekend the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources hosted an evening Frog Walk at Devil’s Lake Stat Park. Even though the weather was cold for us mammals (about 34 degrees) it was just fine for the frogs. We were able to hear three species of pond breeding frogs: Wood Frog (Lithobates sylvaticus) Spring Peeper [...]
Posted in Amphibians, Caecilians, Frogs, Salamanders on Apr 22nd, 2013
Answer: 370 million years ago Most of you (64.71%) selected the correct answer of 370 million years ago. Some of you (8.82%) guessed too early for the 100,500 years ago answer and others (26.47%) guessed way too late for the 620 billion years ago answer (remember the Earth is only about 4.5 billions years old [...]
Posted in Amphibians, Salamanders on Apr 18th, 2013
After coming out of hibernation, Green Salamanders (Aneides aeneus) spend most of their time hiding in rock crevices. A Green was first found by me in the rock shown below in 2007 and she has had great fidelity for almost always being in one of the crevices in the upper left. And last year she [...]
Posted in Amphibians, Salamanders on Apr 13th, 2013
Here’s two pictures of a Green Salamander (Aneides aeneus) hatchling which came out of hibernation within the last few days. It had come out of it’s egg early in September, 2012. This was from one of about 30 Green Salamander broods I monitored in a western North Carolina state park last year.
