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Digital scan from my color slide. Ordway Preserve (= Ordway-Swisher Biological Station), near Smith Lake, Putnam Co., Florida. 9 Mar 1985.

Amelanistic specimen. Reported in: Stuart, J.N. and C.K. Dodd, Jr. 1985. Life History Notes: Cemophora coccinea copei. Coloration. Herpetological Review 16:78.

A typical Payne's Prairie eastern king snake. They were common 50 years ago, when the prairie had huge numbers of water loving snakes. Over a thousand snakes (mostly banded water snakes and Florida green water snakes) were often run over and killed on a given night in the summertime on the two major highways that cross the basin, and eventually the snake populations crashed. Now, there are far fewer water snakes and perhaps no king snakes at all.

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

Photos taken at Scripps Institute of Oceanography
Weight : 90-100g
Total length: 642mm
SVL: 567mm
Tail length: 75mm

Adult male, head covered in algae.
In situ photo Credit: “Sean Carey, Lifeguard Captain, City of Coronado”

Laying eggs! Near her burrow, but not in the apron. While two friends and I observed--from a distance--she periodically pulled her head into her shell and held it there briefly as if it helped her push eggs out, although I couldn't be sure about that because I wasn't close enough to see the eggs. She also kicked her hind legs to bury the eggs and made dirt fly up behind her several times.

Sitting on ledge at visitors' centre near entrance to Caverna do Diabo (Devil's Cave) in the Upper Ribeira Valley. Spotted by Gislene Furquim, trainee environmental monitor (guide) from the nearby quilombo community of Ivoporunduva. Identification by Bruno Lima. Photos by Gislene Furquim and Tubtim Tubtim.

This Observation is Rated "5 F" - (another "Fossilized Foto From the Fingers Files"), haha! Found this beautiful 45" adult male Lampropeltis getula "floridana" (this particular regional color/pattern form was called a "Tampa Yellow" by field guys of the day) about 25 years ago, while exploring a little-used section of the Seminole Gulf Freight Railway that ran along a saltmarsh within walking distance of my hotel. Several Mangrove Saltmarsh Snakes (Nerodia c. compressicauda) of both phases, and nearly all growth stages were observed in the immediate vicinity as well - their abundance undoubtedly a contributing factor in this Kingsnake's robust weight and outwardly healthy appearance!

NUMBER: 20200722
SPECIES: Spotted Turtle, Clemmys guttata (Schneider, 1792)[1]
DISTINCTIONS: None to 100 round yellow to orange spots on the carapace (upper shell), and upper legs and head (diagnostic). Undersides orange to yellow with large black blotches on the plastron (lower shell). Orange blotches on both sides of the head. Hatchlings have 1 spot per carapace scute. This is a small semiterrestrial turtle.
LOCALITY: Lely Resort, Naples, Florida
LATITUDE, LONGITUDE: 26°4’51.2” N, 81°42’39.2” W (26.0809, -81.7109)
DATE: 22 July 2020
PHOTOGRAPH: by Catherine Helgeson
KNOWN DISTRIBUTION: Around the eastern half of the Great Lakes disconnected to a range from extreme southern Maine down the eastern coast to halfway down peninsular Florida (Ernst et al., 2009). Our record represents a considerable range extension.
STATUS: Endangered Species reduced to small isolated populations vulnerable to extirpation.
IMPORTANCE: Range extension
OBSERVERS: Dr. Ernest H. Williams, Jr.,[2,3,5,6] and Dr. Lucy Bunkley-Williams[2,4,5,7]
AFILIATIONS, ADDRESSES: [2]Extraordinary Professors, Potchefstroom Campus, North-West University, South Africa; Adjunct Professors, Research Field Station, Florida Gulf Coast University, 5164 Bonita Beach Road, Bonita Springs, FL 34134; [3]Dept. Marine Sciences, University of Puerto Rico (retired); [4]Dept. Biology, UPR (retired); [5]920 St. Andrews Blvd, Naples, FL 34113-8943; [6]e-mail ermest.williams1@upr.edu; cell 239-227-3645, ORCID 0000-0003-0913-3013; [7]Cell 787-467-2179, e-mail lucy.williams1@upr.edu, ORCID 0000-0003-1390-911x.
REFERENCES:
<>Ernst, C. H., and J. E. Lovich. 2009. Pages 212-221 In: 2nd Edition, C. N. Ernst (Ed.). Turtles of the United States and Canada. John Hopkins University Press, 827 pp.
<>Williams, E. H., Jr. and L. Bunkley-Williams. 2020. A new Geographic Record of the endangered Spotted Turtle, Clemmys guttata (Schneider, 1792), in south Florida. Research Quality Report, iNaturalist #55992379, 8 August (open access) [520]
FOOTNOTES:
[1]Identification was peer-reviewed, text edited and condensed. The entire, original text is in our available reprint 520.

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.

Found this lil one which I have never seen a color morph like this for a Mud snake. I determined it to be one based off the visual/physical features such as the “tail spine”, pattern, head/eye shape, as well as a divided anal plate.

For my 501st iNaturalist observation, I want to do something very special, if unusual, to honour my mother, who at 99 years old, has been an inspiring lifelong amateur naturalist and photographer. This is also in honour of her younger brother, who has just passed away at the age of 96. I will submit a valid (accurate place and time) observation on her behalf, with her own photographs, and her sister's written description, of a uniquely documented encounter with a specimen of Florida wildlife nearly 80 years ago, when she was 19 years old.

For the historical record and context, my mother, then Theoma Brocious, having moved with the family as a toddler to Florida in 1925, followed in her own mother's footsteps as a photographer, and began documenting wildlife in Florida when she bought her own first 35mm camera while in High School in Fort Myers. Her oldest sister, Thelma, had by then married Frank Heath, a high school teacher. Thelma & Frank moved to the fishing Town of Everglades, Colier County, Fla., three days after the Great Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 that destroyed the overseas railroad to Key West. They were then transferred to Marco Island (then accessible only by ferry or freight train) where Thelma also became certified as a school teacher. They both taught on Marco for thirteen years beginning in 1936, living with the few other teachers at "Uncle" Jim & "Aunt" Jonnie Barfield's seven bedroom home and boardinghouse at Caxambas, at the southern end of the island. The newly built four room combined school on Marco at that time employed four Teachers to educate around 80 students in the 12 grades. Frank started off handling all of grades 7 through 12 in his room upstairs. Naples was then "a small village at that time and just a bend in the trail," and there was only one Medical Doctor in the County, over in Everglades.

So, my mother Theoma made photographs, and kept handwritten indexes with Dates and brief descriptions. Thelma would later write an extensive memoir that includes a lot of great stories and now historically valuable data.

This observation combines the two - the photographs (scanned from the original 35mm negatives) and specific dates from Theoma's contemporary records ("July, 1943" on "Finopan film") - with Thelma's vivid recollections written later. Note, Thelma's written narrative is very precise as to this observation's exact location (details clarified and corroborated by other portions of her writings as well).

Here then, with no apologies, is a slice of life (wildlife), from the olden days in the Florida of 1943:

"One spring [sic] in the early '40s Frank [Thelma's husband Frank Heath] went to a state meeting somewhere upstate, I was to go to Ft. Myers and pick him up on the week end. Odessa Levins, Donald Wine, Frankie [son] and I drove up together. When we got almost to the railroad crossing (which later was the new road bed into Marco), I saw a rattlesnake lying just at the edge of the pavement. I ran over it with one wheel and stopped. It didn't seem to have hurt her and she crawled down to the edge of the canal. She seemed quite sluggish as she had just recently eaten. Frankie and Donald went up to a bridge about 150 feet away that had been recently repaired and found a piece of a six foot long piece of 2 x 4. They brought it back. I took it and hit the snake on the head a couple times. She seemed dead so I dragged her to the edge of the pavement, A Tamiami freight semi came along and the driver stopped. He got out and walked back, keeping about ten feet away from the snake. He asked me if I knew what I was fooling with. I told him I did and was not taking any chances with it. We let it lay there and it didn't move so I decided to take it along. We had a burlap bag in the trunk of the car and we put it in that. I tied it shut and we went on our way.

When we got to Dad and Mother's, Burnell [younger brother Burnell Brocious] took it out of the car and dumped it into a deep pail. It was dead. Burnell coiled it up in a box and we took it up to the Ft. Myers News Press - where Dad [Robert Calvin Brocious] was a linotype operator. We had some fun with the men there. The next morning I took it to Ike Shaw who was a taxidermist. He said it was a female as the markings were hearts instead of diamonds and it was the prettiest one he had ever seen. She had eaten a half grown rabbit. He cured the skin and mounted it on green felt for a wall hanging. It was 5' 11" long and had 11 rattles – no button. I had knocked just a couple of the scales off the top of her head. My big game hunting in the Everglades."

[excerpted from:]
Journeythrulife
Written For My Family
1997
By
Thelma B. Heath

• In the photographs, Thelma is holding up the big Rattler, and their father is displaying the mounted skin.
• Is there any truth to the Taxidermist's claim that one can sex an Eastern Diamondback by the shape of their diamonds/hearts?
• While the photographs obviously show only what seems the end of the story, and are of course verifiable evidence of the species involved, the observation is, in effect, of the live snake, as it was first encountered - 150 feet from that bridge, just before that railroad crossing / roadbed (both of which are actually still identifiable in a much changed landscape). That is not negated by the fact that that snake was then killed, then photographed. Incidentally, as the specimen's skin was preserved, it theoretically could contribute more (genetic?) data in future, if its whereabouts in some family collection (or highschool biology classroom, more likely) could be rediscovered.

As one who knew the beloved Mrs. Heath as my fascinating Aunt Thelma, it almost goes without saying that this story is no doubt the only time she deliberately killed a wild animal in the near wilderness of Florida for a reason other than to put dinner on the table, and that even then it was done reluctantly and out of a sense of community duty that made perfect sense at the time, and not for "sport." What's more, and very characteristically, she immediately found a way to add real human value to the event by having the beautiful hide tanned so that she could use it to inspire wonder, admiration, and respect for such a snake in her hundreds of young students over her long career as a Teacher, both on Marco, and later in Naples (after 1949). Her quiet passion for all things in nature really stood out to me, as a child, and her home was a veritable museum of seashells and her artwork made from cypress knees and bracket fungi etc. Her students were so lucky to have learned with her over the years.

We saw this snake swimming in the shallow water near the boardwalk. He was very afraid of us kept slithering away fast whenever we approached. I noticed that the end of his tail has a flat, rounded paddle shape very different from that of most snakes!

Class: Reptilia - Scaled reptile
Order: Sqaumata - overlapping scaled lepidosaur, legless
Family: Colubridae - mostly shy and non venomous

conditions: cloudy
location: swampy part of NATL forest (near the pond), beneath a wooded path/bridge
behavior: slithering away from nearby humans using lateral undulation, attempting to hide beneath the path/bridge
appearance: no eyelids/earholes, black with large yellowish eyes, round pupils, keeled scales, narrow head

class: reptilia - possesses scales
superorder: lepidosaura - overlapping scales
order squamata - no premaxillary beak, jaw structure that enhances cranial kinesis, not in new zealand - in other words, its not a tuatara
suborder scleroglossa: nonfleshy chemosensory tongue
family colubridae - no legs/eyelids/earholes, large eyes, nonvenomous (not that i checked...), nontriangular head