Recent herps

Sarah and I went out to check nests with an endangered species biologist who works on sea turtles. Unfortunately the photo quality is poor, but we had to share with the world that we got to see baby sea turtles.



In total, we got to see nine hatchling Green Sea Turtles (Chelonia mydas), and Sarah got to turtlesit while we were recording data. It might sound easy, but you can't really hold onto nine at a time, and they just got faster and faster.

A couple of days ago, I was happy to see my first Florida Pine Snake (Pituophis melanoleucus mugitus). It was a pretty young one, so its markings were relatively well defined.

In this photo, you can see how the markings go from being clearly defined near the tail, to being very vague and indistinct toward the head. It isn't because of that part of the body being over the tire mark.