Iquitos, a Peruvian river city accessible to the outside world only by water or air, has just one road leading out of town, a two-lane blacktop that runs for 60 km to the port of Nauta. The night before our tour group heads down the Amazon, we engage a van…
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Occasionally I’m asked questions like “what is your favorite herp / herping place / herp adventure?”. Answers for the first two change constantly, but to date I have a pretty steady answer for the third one. I’m a card-carrying thamnophile. My love affair with the genus Thamnophis carries across four…
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When October wanes and November approaches, I start to wonder about when my herping season will end. What will be the last herp of the year? Can I see one more new thing, or have I already added the last new species? And most importantly, how can I prolong my…
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The neonate tzabcan had crawled out of a cornfield, and was making its way to dense forest on the other side of the road when it was smashed flat against the pavement by a passing vehicle. We stopped to take a look at the unfortunate little rattlesnake; I took a…
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One of the hallmark activities of field herping, driving on (preferably) lonely roads at night can be incredibly productive at times. In the United States there are some famous and infamous roads for road cruising; Mexico is chock full of them, and other countries have their share. I’m here to…
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The hard drive on my laptop bricked recently, and while going through the laborious process of restoring files from backup, I came across a folder labeled ‘10292006’ in my image archive. Opening the folder and looking at the images within, I remembered that October 29th, 2006 had been a good…
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There’s not much trouble with this herping life, except for the Too-Many-Too-Much problem: too many places to visit, too much to see, and too much to cram into a relatively short lifespan. It always boils down to money and time; choices have to be made, and there are too many…
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The Madre Selva field station is on the banks of the Rio Orosa, and if you go out on that river at night, you can find Spectacled Caiman (Caiman crocodilus) in the quieter backwaters, their eyes glowing red when hit with a flashlight. Go up the shallow side creeks and…
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‘I am Nag,’ said the cobra; ‘look, and be afraid!’….But at the bottom of his cold heart, he was afraid. -Kipling It was our last full herping day in Thailand, and so far all of our venomous snakes had been pit vipers (Trimeresurus vogeli), at rest on tree branches over…
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“There ain’t much between the Pole and South Dakota, and barb wire won’t stop the wind…” So goes a pretty good song by James McMurtry, but I beg to differ with him – there’s a whole bunch of North Dakota in the way, to say nothing of Manitoba. I was…
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