Florida - March 2004

Spring Break in Florida - March 2004

After a boring winter Atlanta Megan and I decided to head down to the Florida Keys for spring break in the first week of March. As a valentines day gift, Megan kindly allowed a couple of extra days on the way down to do a little early spring herping. We departed with hopes of good flipping, a long list of target species and dreams of cane field kings.

As the weather was chilly heading out we high-tailed it to Florida where the thermometer slowly edged up into the mid-70's. Our first stop was the Big Bend/Gulf Hammock region where we drove some back roads in search of a few species that had eluded me in the past. Late afternoon brought quick cooling but at about 5:30 the snakes started moving. First finds were three Dusky Pygmy Rattlesnakes (Sistrurus miliarius) in quick succession.

The downer of the afternoon was a freshly hit, beautiful Gulf Hammock Rat Snake (Elaphe obsoleta). I quickly overcame my dissappointment when I saw a slender serpent quickly making its way across the road. Blue- Striped Garter Snake (Thamnophis sirtalis similis). Although I have found several blueish garters in Florida and southern Georgia, this was my first true blue-stripe.

With one target speices already under our belts, we returned to the freeway and headed south for the Tampa area. After a night in a local motel we hit a canal outside Tampa where we had heard there was a good chance of getting a Floria Kingsnake.

A couple of hours of searchin yielded good numbers and diversity of snakes but unfortunatly no kingsnakes. Florida Banded Watersnakes (Nerodia fasciata) were common, along with a few brown watersnakes (Nerodia taxispilota) that eluded capture.

This gravid female Black Racer (Coluber constrictor) was found amidst rocks along the canal dike.

Rock-flipping was also productive, yielding several Ringneck Snakes (Diadophis punctatus)...

...an Eastern Glass Lizard (Ophisaurus ventralis)...

...and several Brahminy Blind Snakes (Ramphotyphlops braminus). These bizzare little snakes are an exotic species that is apparently thriving in Florida. A new lifer for me, though.

Keeping to the theme of introduced species, I noticed that the canal was infested with introduced Talapia and Pleco catfish. I got lucky and managed to grab one of the catfish.

The rest of the trip was actually fairly uneventful herp-wise. We drove through central Florida and found lots of road-killed Thamnophis, Racers, and corn snakes, but the only live herp we found was a Striped Mud Turtle (Kinosternon bauri) that had been hit. We spent a morning in the cane fields and came up with little more than a kingsnake shed skin and glimpses of racers and watersnakes. When we reached the keys the weather turned cold and a day hike at a middle-keys nature preserve yielded only Brown Anoles (Anolis sagrei)...

... and a single Racer. Although middle-Keys racers are supposed to be black-everglades integrades, this one looked to me much more like an Everglades Racer (Coluber constrictor paludicola) to me, a subspecies that I had yet to capture.

Although the end of the trip was a little dissappointing, we did find a couple of our target species and the trip was certainly a respite from the winter blahs. Guess I'll just have to go back to Florida to get the rest...