anthony_damiani's Favorites

A coiled, placid 32-inch (+/-) Crotalus seen late afternoon trailside. Note 1: This handsome specimen was likely lying in wait for a meal, possibly hoping for one of the rabbits that frequent the area (including one that I inadvertently flushed a few seconds earlier). I walked within three feet of the specimen before becoming aware of its presence. No threat behavior -- just minimal tongue probing about a minute into my brief photo session. Note 2: This is the fourth Diamondback I (or my son) have encountered within half a mile of this location since August 2022. The first was about 3.5 feet; the second, about 2 feet (roadkill - observation noted in iNat); the third and fourth, about 2.5 feet each. Note 3: When I returned about an hour later, the specimen had moved on.

Wow, I rarely see squirrel treefrogs in this area! What a photogenic frog. Found in wooded/palmetto area along sidewalk at night near a breeding pond where several species of frogs were calling. Tons of tiny froglets everywhere too (it had just finished raining). I think most of the tiny baby frogs were juvenile Cuban treefrogs, but I thought some may have been squirrel frogs. Seeing this adult makes me think that's more likely too.

My lifer! For real this time! A barred owl was sitting in the middle of the road, and when it flew away, we saw this snake sitting there. Didn't look like it was attacked by the Owl. It was very calm and never bit me. I helped it cross the road into the swamp on the other side. Snake was about a foot long. Awesome to see one that isn't being eaten by a heron!

I had no idea these were in this area! I almost hit it with my car, but fortunately I missed. Was expecting it to be a Ringneck but nope! Now I gotta find a big one. This baby was probably 8 inches max, maybe less.

My dad and I found this big Corn Snake basking in the road! It's about 3.5 feet. It had a wound on its left side. I tried picking it up to help it cross, but it coiled up and started striking my hands. I put gloves on and eventually got it across the road. Beautiful snake, and one of my favorite species!

On the edge of Blue Hole, FL Caverns SP. Found this nerodia down in some cypress knees eating what I thought was a red salamander, pulled him up on the shore, and apparently he was in the process of killing a large adult waterdog, unfortunately. Would've been the best find of the trip; still super cool. Not sure of the taxonomy with waterdogs here.

Lifer 🥺❤️ this is a scarlet snake and not a scarlet kingsnake because the rings don't go all the way around- this adorable little guy had a plain white belly. And an adorable snoot for eating small eggs.

Went out herping to celebrate getting my bio masters and finding this snake was even better than getting that degree 😂 I was looking for coral snakes but a scarlet snake was so much better. This adorable friend was seen slowly snuffling through the sandy leaf litter on a hot humid night after rainy day. I assume it was searching for eggs or another prey item. Didn't seem to mind me much as I was frantically trying to get enough cell signal to triple check it wasn't a coral snake so I could hold the cutie pie. I didn't get great photos while holding the poor guy as I was trying to juggle a phone, a flashlight, and this beauty. What a gorgeous creature. Very slow and docile. Similar to holding a rubber boa or a Kenyan sand boa. Pretty small too- about the width of a yellow pencil at most. I put it down where I saw it and it curled up and didn't move for the next 20 min I stayed watching. Super cool.

HUGE shout out to @anthony_damiani who gave me some great herping tips & locations for this area. I am forever grateful! This is by far my favorite snake I've ever seen in Florida!

Looks different than the green treefrogs I see around here. More pudgy/compact and lacking the super obvious white stripe around the sides (though seems to have a faint yellow one maybe?). Squirrel frog perhaps?

Spotted coachwhip with young gopher tortoise in its mouth. Took one more step and coachwhip took off, dropping gopher tortoise. Cleaned up tortoise and let it go at a little distance after consulting with professional rehabber.

This is the fourth in a series of Burmese python predation events taking place in this tunnel, this one at 12/01/22 at 04:21, the second of this day, she had eaten a KLCM earlier this day. There is a gif in this observation, so it is best viewed on a desktop since they don't load on the app. This is part of a series of observations of the same snake consuming or attempting to consume Key Largo cotton in the Florida Keys. There is also a gif summarizing most of the sequence at the end.

First fully documented instance of a Burmese python striking at, subduing, and consuming an animal in its invasive range. All on camera! This python struck 5 times at Key Largo cotton mice within an old network of pipes, two of strikes were successful. During one evening, the snake successfully consumed one mouse, and attempted to eat a second shortly after. These cotton mice are less than 1% of this python's biomass. Which shows that even large snakes are eating very small prey items when present.

The Key Largo cotton mouse is a federally endangered subspecies of cotton mouse found only in Key Largo, so this series of events is particularly concerning for the future of these animals. Key Largo woodrats, another federally protected rodent, were also found in this tunnel. They have a much lower fecundity than KLCM and are a frequent item found in the gut content of pythons pulled from Key Largo.

All of this information and more can be found in "Telescoping prey selection in invasive Burmese pythons spells trouble for endangered rodents" -https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1hZm58MrlBCxKm

This is also my first publication so I'm quite proud of it.

The story as I remember it on this one. Someone sent me a text saying they found this snake and had it in a bucket but wanted me to ID it. They "tossed a lizard in with it". I got there later and looked in the bucket under something they had and it was eating the ground skink. Kind of freaked me out when I saw it for two reasons, they had a protected species in a bucket which is a no no and the fact that it was eating a skink. Any website you go to at this point only listed crowned snakes as their food source. Since this pic you see more than just snakes listed. I caught a lot of hell for this pic I took and encouraged the home owner to release it back where he found it after it finished eating