Combating Misinformation with Identification Tips and Resources
Like so many other people, I grew up falsely thinking brown recluse spiders are common in Vermont. In actuality, brown recluses don’t live here, and if you look at range maps they don’t even get close. Yet common wisdom here contradicts fact; everybody knows you have to watch out for the brown recluse and you […]
Winter Hideouts
Winter in the Great Northern Forests is not the best time to find reptiles and amphibians in the northeast, to say the least. Many of us who are fond of looking for these animals find other hobbies for the winter, in places where there is a thick cover of snow for months on end. Every […]
The Snake of the North
Basking along the edge of some random driveway in north Georgia, a Common Gartersnake was the first reptile I saw after moving away from Vermont for the first time. Gartersnakes, being the most abundant reptile in the state of Vermont, weren’t a species I was excited to see. Having been in Georgia for a grand […]
Fall Peepers – A Seasonal Aberration
Up here in the often frigid Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, seasons are very clear-cut. We have mud season, spring, summer, fall, second mud season, and winter. That is a stark contrast from what I experienced in South Texas where it’s either hot and dry, hot and wet, or cool and wet (hot and dry being […]
A How-to on Proper Use of a Field Guide
Field guides are a gateway to understanding the natural world. Indeed, many herpers I know treasure their very first field guide, which opened their eyes to the diversity around them, keeping its tattered remains up on a shelf next to newer editions as a memento. My first was copy Peterson’s “Reptiles and Amphibians of Eastern […]
Snappers: The myth vs the turtle
“Yeah, I’m never swimming here again”. This is a common reaction from people upon seeing a particularly large Common Snapping Turtle (Chelydra serpentina) in any body of water. I am beginning to lose count of how many people have expressed such sentiment to me over the years. As if on cue, as I began to…
Tripod Turtles
Last month during a Wood Turtle (Glyptemys insculpta) survey I stumbled upon one of the most vibrantly colored turtles I have ever seen. Easily recognized by their brown shells, black heads, and distinctly orange necks and limbs, even the more drably-colored Wood Turtles are quite striking, but this particular animal really stood out to […]
Woodland clams are a thing!
How on earth did thousands of clams end up in a vernal pool that shares no connection with other bodies of water? Furthermore, how did they colonize thousands of vernal pools across the United States? Those are good questions, and ones that almost everyone asks immediately after learning many vernal pools are populated by something […]
Kingdom Mystery: Quest for the Blue-spotted Salamander
As a kid growing up at the south end of Lake Champlain, I spent many evenings fishing for perch down at the bay below my house. I’d picked up snake and frog wrangling as a side hobby pretty early on and by the time I was 8 or 9 thought I knew the name of […]
Egg Mass Identification in the Great Northern Forests
Spring Egg Mass Identification in the Great Northern Forests With winter concluding in Northern New England and already past farther south, amphibians in the northeast are migrating to their breeding habitat and beginning to lay eggs. Many of the species that breed in the early spring seek temporary bodies of water to lay their eggs, […]