reptiles

This eastern fence lizard was sunning itself on the front porch this morning.

And we all know what that means: photos!

The first comes from the Apalachicola Bluffs and Ravines Preserve, and in this photo you can see all the elements of its name: the Apalachicola River, big and muddy from a recent rain; Alum Bluff, on the eastern bank, from which the photo was taken; and the mouth [...]

Holy crap there are a lot of diamondbacks on Camp Blanding. Here’s number five in all its creepily awesome glory. (The white thing is a paper towel my teammate was trying to get it to strike at.)

And sort of in time for the Friday Ark, too!

Yikes. Has it been that long since I posted? I guess it has!
When I planned the ID-a-day project, I failed to take the weather into account. It rained all last week, and since my camera is not waterproof I left it in the truck most of the time. Thus, no new ID pictures.
But I did [...]

I’ve been hoping to get a good shot of one all summer and I finally got a chance last week. It crawled past my foot, nearly giving me a heart attack, before retreating to the edge of a log to curl up and rattle and glare, but it never tried to strike.

Today, we got to see some results of our labor. Some gopher tortoises were brought up from another base, down in Melbourne, and we had to find empty burrows to move them to at Camp Blanding.

I got to work on a prescribed burn Thursday, which was immensely fun and entertaining, but unfortunately that was the day I forgot my camera. So I have no photos of the 30-foot tower of flame I caused in the middle of the woods. Too bad, because it was awesome.