Sorry it's taking so long to put these dang pics up. Lots of hours at work this week.
Anyway, Saturday morning got started a little late. Tiffany had to stay in the hotel room because she had an online class she couldn't miss. Sofia and I met up with Chris and his wife at their hotel and made our way north into the Big Thicket.
It was a beautiful sunny morning with high humidity. We drove past the preserve and found a nice, off the beaten path area to get out and hike. There were patches of asphalt on the ground, which seemed to indicate that the forest was re-claiming some previously developed land. Almost immediately, I started finding those elusive little Ground Skinks that I can never seem to catch or stalk in order to snap a pic or two.
A few minutes into our hike, Chris's wife found this guy basking by a sapling pine:
Sofia "hooking" the snake:
Hard to see in the pic, but this guy had some sort of bugs in his mouth:
Parasites? Symbiotic clingers-on? I don't know.
After hiking a bit more (found wild berries!)
one of the DFW Herp Society guys flipped this guy, another Eastern Hog:
By that point Sofia was tired and Tiff was pretty much done with her class, so we bid the other herpers goodbye and headed back to the hotel. We were supposed to rest up for the evening's herping activities, but when we found out there was a gator park nearby we decided to head there instead. I won't bore you guys with a bunch of captive gator pics, but I would like to say that those guys at Gator Country run a nice operation and put on an entertaining and informative show. They even got a bull gator to perform his mating roar, water droplets dancing and flying off his back and everything - something I never thought I'd get to see in person.
At this point, I guess it's only right to address the TX road-hunting issue. Yes, we drove around looking for areas in which we could find herps, and yes - we found herps on the roads themselves in transit, but we did not collect or harass any animals. On the contrary, we documented them, quickly photographed them, and removed them from the roadways to prevent them from becoming permanent parts of the driving surface.
With that said, here are the evening's finds:
Broad-banded Watersnake
Western Mud Snake
Yellow-bellied Watersnake
After that, we found a freshly hit Cottonmouth, which was especially heartbreaking, since that was one of a handful of species I had really hoped to find.
Chris then took us to a spot where he'd seen a Timber Rattlesnake with it's head crushed and it's rattle removed earlier in the day. When we arrived, this is all we found of the poor creature:
Seems like a couple people now have some illegal trophies on their hands.
Around that time, Tiffany started feeling the effects of a mild case of food poisoning, so I took her and Sofia back to the hotel. I ventured out on my own to follow up on a hunch I had gleaned from a local map and try to find some good spots for the morning. Unfortunately, I got lost for about an hour.
Once I got back on track, I found the spot I was looking for, decided it would be just fine for the morning, and made my way back to the hotel. Hundreds of toads and frogs were seen, including a few DOR watersnakes and ribbon snakes.
Once at the hotel, I made sure Tiff was OK and then passed out.
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