I’m a little rusty on photographing… plus, I didn’t have my flash with me at the time of encountering this parrot snake (Leptophis sp.), so the photos I got were pretty poor. In any case, this is one of two species that occur on the caribbean slope: L. ahaetulla or L. depressirotris.
Dendrobates aurotus in Valle de Las Estrella.
At the edge of some bambu on Boa’s property (between 5 and 10 acres), there is a good number of herps, including this guy. We also encountered a tropical night lizard.
A few days after Boa released an adult Yellow-spotted tropical night lizard (Lepidophyma flavimaculatum), we discovered that she had reproduced. These night lizards are viviparous, giving birth to live young, and are often parthenogenetic.
Outside Boa’s home, a male Agalychnis callidryas has set up territory in an ornamental plant hanging over a swimming pool. It calls each evening and is regularly successful in procuring some eggs. Here’s a few photos of him and his fertilized eggs. The development of the tadpoles are in various stages – once the tadpoles use up all the yolk in their eggs, they will escape the egg and fall into the pool below the leaf that they are attached to. Unfortunately, there is no water in the pool, but Boa try to rear them in buckets around the house (inadvertently breeding mosquitoes too…). Ants also prey on the developing eggs too.
A mother Strawberry Poison Dart Frog (Oophaga pumilio) transports her young around on her back. It appear that she was dipping one of her tadpoles in the phytotank (reservoir of water captured between leaves of a plant) of this bromeliad. Their genus means egg eater, which comes from the maternal behavior of feeding unfertilized eggs to the tadpoles. It’s the first time I observed an adult carrying its young!
Rhaebo haematiticus in Reserva Biologica Hitoy Cerere
At first glance, I fearfully began to yank Amos away from the snake that he found and sniffed curiously. Upon further inspection, I discovered that (1) it was dead, and (2) it was a harmless juvenile milk snake. I wonder if anyone has trained dogs to track herps for fieldwork…
I was able to see a captive desert tortoise, but these road signs indicating tortoise crossings were just a tease.
The third species in Sceloporus for me. While common at the Red Rock Canyon Conservation Area, it didn’t appear that they were in breeding season, since I didn’t see any colorful males.
Edit: May be Uta stansburiana, Common Side-blotched Lizard.
For the first time in the wild, I came across an Eastern Box Turtle Terrapene carolina carolina at Cascade Springs Nature Preserve. I, of course, have a pet box turtle (Rocky) adopted from the Leff’s at Kent State University (who had adopted it from a former graduate student… who had taken it in from a middle school student of hers, I believe), but I had never encountered a wild one. While it was exciting, and I did get to see it exposed out of the shell, Amos was with me and scared the turtle into hiding, so I couldn’t get a descent shot.
