Florida 2014 & 2017, (some) herps & hurricanes

Better late than never? Very likely not, but anyway- as written and left out to fallow on my desktop after my September 2017 Florida trip (just a couple of 2019 edits, for continuity you understand, and just because I wanted to rant about people killing nightjars too…):

American croc, Crocodylus acutus, doing its best impression of me planning my Florida 2014 road trip

Goes without saying, 3,500 miles across the Atlantic, and my 1st snaggable snake was in the ditch next to this big lad

I’m going to cheat and combine my only two American herping experiences, spanning 3 years, into one here. This is because my trip earlier this month was slightly hampered by what was, apparently, the strongest Atlantic hurricane in history. So I had more of a road trip than I was hoping for… So first up (and mostly just so I have a couple of snake photos on here that don’t look like they were taken underwater at night), February 2014; I finally got to Florida. The chance to see some of the American snakes I had dreamed about finding since I was a kid, but as ever my planning was a little bit “relaxed”, and I ended up driving around all over the place wasting a lot of time when I wanted to be out searching.

EDB, a full-body shot was not possible, as both rattlers had important business to take care of

Can you feel the love?

The Everglades National Park was obviously a no-brainer, even my non-planning self could see that. My 1st day there provided the amazing sight of mating Eastern diamondback rattlesnakes (Crotalus adamanteus), only noticed when I heard the palmetto bushes a few meters off a trail shaking about. A swimming Florida water snake (A Bandie; Nerodia fasciata pictiventris) guarded by a large-ish gator in a roadside ditch would soon follow, and then more Bandies around these ditches. Driving out on the main park road provided my third species of the day, a beautiful Florida cottonmouth (Agkistrodon conanti) basking in the remaining rays of the ridiculously warm winter sun. I stood over it as a few cars passed by scarily close to hitting it, so I unintentionally got to see its famous defense display, & I was pleased when it decided to slide back through the roadside vegetation into the safety of the sawgrass swamplands.

Comfortably the safest spot in a couple-thousand square miles of swampy sawgrass wilderness

After a few more Nerodia and another cottonmouth, my trip moved north out of the Park itself, but still around the south Florida area. The biggest highlight was my first ever Eastern/yellow ratsnake (Pantherophis alleghaniensis), which I lucked onto in Hendry County when I chased after a big Black racer (Coluber constrictor) which crossed a dirt road in front of me. Not fast enough to catch the racer due to its head-start, and ridiculous speed, I was gutted about the missed chance. But I still frantically stuck my head into every roadside bush for the next 10 minutes, hoping the racer was still about, and in one was my delightful “golden snake”. I came across another equally large and beautiful one in a wooded area shortly after. The photos are exactly as it was when I stumbled onto it!

A handful of sunshine

A different yellow ratsnake (NC2)

The same yellow rat, just with my camera more up in its grill

Further north into Highland County I managed to find some nice cactus spines to make friends with, and lost a whole bunch of super-charged racers in a prickly patch of wasteland on the edge of a housing development. The snake mating season looked to be in full swing as I rolled into another State Park to find a few more Nerodia of the banded variety, two of which were looking pretty comfortable on their swampy couch.

Bandies, showing the EDBs how it's really done, none of that hiding in the scrub kind of approach here

A delightful Eastern gartersnake (Thamnophis sirtalis sirtalis) rounded off my trip, on a road mid-morning after a huge overnight thunderstorm (not to be the last I’d see of over-enthusiastic weather conditions in the state..). So, slightly delayed by that final slice of luck, I tackled the Miami rush-hour traffic and somehow made my flight in time.

In situ, honestly. Eastern garter highlighting how hovering at head-height by the roadside makes them a lot easier to find than most snakes

Fast-forward (or not, depending on if anyone’s still with me after that) to September 5th 2017. This was going to be my big chance to see a whole bunch more of the state’s snakes that I missed first up. I’d actually even planned things properly, knowing which areas I was going to focus on for each of the 9 precious days (or nights mostly) in the late summer heat. However, a slight problem was swirling its way north-west through the Atlantic towards me in herp-paradise.

Despite a 6am start back in Northumberland, a 9hr trans-Atlantic flight and not very much sleep in 20-something hours, I had to take the chance while I could and I headed straight into the Everglades National Park at 11pm after I got to my motel (turned out, strangely for me, a smart move- this was to be my only shot at nighttime searching in the ‘glades).

Just to show I did see one...the edges are less blurry in real life. Baby cottonmouths are absolute gemstones, and people like to kill these, no doubt as if they gained a stronger foothold they'd enforce stricter gun control and infringe on civil liberties

See above comment regarding clarity of image..people also like to kill these too. Bandies are a delight to work with, I love these things, and no they won't poison your chihuahua or eat your first born

Despite a full-moon (if that even matters, I’ve not done enough US herping to have an opinion on that), and the late hour (which I’m pretty sure does!), this was to be my most productive and exciting night of the trip. Stepping out of the car to see my 1st snake of the trip, a beautiful young Bandie flattening its body onto the warm road, the feeling in the air was incredible, the atmosphere just felt like pure heat, and water. And mosquitos. Even in tropical Borneo I don’t think I’ve ever felt such an amazing “tropical” night. Three cottonmouths, another Bandie, and my first ever Florida green water snake (Nerodia floridana) made the next 3/4hrs pretty enjoyable. Although the mosquitos did their very best to spoil things.

Ambitious orb-weavers looking to snag the next inbound 747

The roll-call of destruction was also a sorry, but expected, sight. A DOR Striped crayfish snake (Liodytes alleni) and 2 Florida brown snakes (Storeria victa) all would’ve been lifers. Always gutting to see anything killed on the roads though, regardless of what it is. I lost count of the amount of flattened Nerodia, along with a number of cottonmouths, and even a small gator. And a Common nighthawk, just so the non-herps didn’t feel left out.

(2019 edit; I read quite a few reports these days where herpers seem almost proud of the fact that they’ve flattened these amazing birds while speeding about after their trophy snakes. While the nighthawk/nightjar habit of floating about in front of your headlights and suddenly landing on blacktops and dirt roads from tropical Asia to the deserts of the New World certainly doesn’t make them honorary members of the Tufty Club, this reckless disregard for modern road safety doesn’t mean they should be mown down to save the trouble of dropping below 50mph. Or whatever ridiculous speeds some people like to road “cruise” at. Not to say that accidents can’t happen, but a bit more respect for one of the most magical nocturnal creatures out there from some of the supposedly nature-loving road users wouldn’t go amiss. I know if I hit one all the kingsnakes in the county wouldn’t save the night in my eyes.)

At last, the 1 anole flavour that's supposed to be here, Anolis carolinesis, the famous Green anole!

From here most things went extremely quickly downhill. It soon became evident after I opened my sleepy eyes the next morning that trouble was brewing. And not just because my feet barely fitted into my daps due to the ankle-swelling effects of last night’s ‘skeeter-fest. A stream of trucks towing boats was rumbling north out of The Keys, and all TVs were tuned to The Weather Channel’s warnings that a monster hurricane was only days away from making landfall in southern Florida. Traffic in the Florida City area was almost gridlocked, as knowing locals rushed to drain the local gas stations & clear the supermarket shelves in preparation for what was to come.

Probably not the best time to go and flip some junk around the back of a local cemetery in the hope of snaffling my Great White Buffalo, the stupidly common Black/Everglades racer. Anyway, surprisingly that didn’t work out, and I soon got on with the more boring (but family & friends at home would possibly argue more important) task of planning my escape from the Miami area. Some reservation-shuffling, and booking a ridiculously overpriced motel in Tallahassee (as it was seemingly the only thing left south of Canada) later, my new & slightly less herp-focused itinerary was beginning to take shape.

When you can't go out in Florida, the herps will just come to you anyway

Yes another non-native, a Cuban treefrog, but you'd let the ESTA departure date slide for eyes like these..

By Wednesday evening the ENP was closed down, and gas was by now very hard to come by, so I waited out the night after queuing for gas at 1am, despite beautiful warm conditions that didn’t hint at the carnage Mother Nature soon had in store. I can’t imagine what it would’ve been like out in the glades that night, the 40-plus miles of road down to Flamingo with no people or cars..the Turkey vultures would definitely be left wondering where their usual pancake breakfast was the next morning.

Now, where's that pancake breakfast?

I found myself in the canefields area close to Lake Okeechobee on Thursday, and had again queued around the block for a full gas tank, so I took what could’ve been my last chance to road-cruise one of the areas I had read about and google earthed back in the chilly Northumbrian summer. I had to leave enough gas to reach Ocala the next day, and thunderstorms were enclosing on all sides, so this was not going to be a leisurely all-nighter…

Was good to see all the natives taking up positions ready for those 100mph winds

Luckily Florida gave me a little bit more, and a grey juvenile Yellow ratsnake came just as I’d almost given up, sliding over towards me on the dusty roadside when I got out of the car one last time to watch the lightning of the approaching storm. And yep, I did think I had a lifer baby grey ratsnake, not realising I was out of range and that those gigantic golden beasts started out so small and grey. Well, I had guessed the small part was inevitable. A beautiful young Brown water snake (Nerodia taxispilota), a genuine lifer, followed on the way back, as did my first ever Corn snake…however it had just been hit (probably by a car that had sped past about 10 minutes earlier down the road), and despite looking beautiful in the torchlight, it wasn’t going to live to see Irma pass through its homeland.

A grey yellow ratsnake

A cute baby brown

The remaining days involved mostly gridlocked interstates, gas station queues that made you think that those blueberry cream Danishes maybe are God’s pastries after all, and hiding in a motel room in Tallahassee for 24 hours eating Fruit Loops out of the packet. Good times. I managed one more snake, a delectable big cold and sluggish Bandie on the side of a busy road the overcast and chilly night prior to Irma hitting. It was either more than happy to be moved to temporary safety, or just too sluggish to even mind being picked up.

Eastern fence lizard, Sceloporus undulatus, shockingly on a wall

Motel en-suite not looking so great the morning after Irma. Not really, think this was left out to pasture long before the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season

So, back to 2019, and that’s all I managed to write at the time. I did spend a brief amount of time in Ocala National Forest on my way back south after Irma had passed, and had a quick look in Apalachicola NF before I left Tallahassee, but despite some lovely looking habitat, petrol station and time issues meant I couldn’t do what I’d originally planned, and I ended up with no additional herpage. Clearly there wasn’t so much great writing material to be found in traffic jams and enforced stays in economy motel rooms (at luxury prices) in state capitals. Luckily Florida would be kinder to me on future trips, and I fully realise that events like this can and do wreck lives, so leaving with nothing but a partially spoilt holiday & being lucky enough to return on future herping trips with Neil in 2018 & 2019 was perfectly fine with me. And seeing a couple of snake species for the first time used to constitute a successful trip anyway, not so long ago..!

A post-Irma sunset in Ocala National Forest