Photo Credit: ©WCS A head-started female Siamese crocodile nesting in the wild

In a huge win for conservation, the first ever nesting behavior has been observed by reintroduced female Siamese crocodile that resulted in two hatchlings! The hatchlings are now being headstarted by the Wildlife Conservation Society.

The authors note: “While collecting eggs for incubation in May 2022, we were able to identify a unique series of notched tail scutes on a female C. siamensis as she aggressively defended a nest.

“From these markings we determined the female was hatched on 11 August 2012 (age = 9.75 years) and released in March 2014. A camera-trap placed at the nest on 11 May 2022 and recovered on 5 July 2022 recorded 1724 images.

“These images indicated the female remained in attendance at the nest throughout the monitoring period. Camera-trap imagery captured eight nest repair events and two nest defense events; during the later the female defended the nest from village dogs.”

They have managed to reduce the mortality with their headstart program by an amazing 90%! To read the paper and full story, click here.

Young adult Barbour's Map Turtle
Back around 1960-something or the other, Patti and I used to take roadtrips much more frequently than we do today. As I think back, that was understandable because so much, including the various herps, was new to us. So we meandered from one end of the state to the other, and then westward to the 3rd end of the state, the Panhandle that reaches from Madison to Escambia counties. Somewhere along these craggy lines I began photographing again with the goal of depicting each and every amphibian and reptile that called Florida home. And and with that fixed firmly in mind, a beautiful dimorphic aquatic Panhandle turtle.caught my eye.

This was and is Barbour’s Map Turtle. It took only a few minutes research to learn that to do photographic justice to this persistently aquatic turtle would require pics being taken of 3 stages in its life, a hatchling, an adult male, diminutive though these may be, and a hulking adult female that, when fully grown is more than twice the size of the males. To apply a measurement to carapace sizes, hatchlings are about 1 ½ inches, adult males are about 4 ½ inches, and adult females are about 12 inches, impressively notable differences.

To shorten an unwieldy tale, hatchlings and males were easily photographed. It took only a couple of slow and enjoyable canoe rides, stopping here and there at submerged or protruding snags to take the “needed” pix. But the adult females were another several stories. Over the years Patti and I tried and failed. 4 decades rolled on by. 20 years ago Carl May and I tried. Again, failure. Now here we are in 2024 and I’m going to try again—this time with Jake..

And, because of unexpected flooding we almost failed again. But at the last stop Jake came through. He spotted a single female, way downriver, clambered down an 8 foot vertical drop, and took pix for both him and me-----and you. .Thanks, Jake.


Continue reading "Barbour’s Map Turtle"