2017 SnakeStalk Field Trip – Success

2017 SnakeStalk Field Trip – Success
I’m done with snakes. Just too intense to go four days and nights and get 4 to 6 hours of sleep a night. I just woke up from a 3-hour nap and thought I should recap what happened at our 2017 SnakeStalk event.

We had participants from Germany, Canada, Hong Kong, the USA, Singapore, and Hungary. The people are what make the event special – and it was an absolute success there! This year’s event was less chaotic, safer, and more enjoyable for me, and I think everyone else.

We were able to find a few species that were too wiley for us last year, and we had a decent species count this year.

Snake Species Found

  1. A. prasina x6? – Oriental whip snake
  2. B. dendrophila x3 – Mangrove cat snake
  3. C. maculiceps – Small-spotted coral snake
  4. C. rhodostoma – Malayan pit viper
  5. C. ornata – Golden tree snake
  6. C. ruffus – Red-tailed pipe snake
  7. D. subannulatus – Malayan banded wolf snake
  8. D. rubescens – Keel-bellied whip snake
  9. E. plumbea x2 – Rice paddy snake (Plumbeous/eus water snake)
  10. H. buccata x2 – Puff-faced water snake
  11. L. capucinus – Common wolf snake
  12. L. laoensis – Laotian wolf snake
  13. O. t. ridleyi – Cave racer
  14. P. carinata – Keeled rat snake
  15. P. reticulatus – Reticulated Python
  16. T. venustus x 3 – Brown-spotted green pit viper
  17. X. trianguligerus x2 – Triangle keelback

In addition to the 17 species (29 snakes) we found above, I brought the following snakes over to the event so participants could see them before we got started.

  • B. candidus – Malayan Krait
  • C. rhodostoma – Malayan Pit Viper
  • Naja kaouthia – Monocled Cobra
  • X. unicolor – Sunbeam
  • C. radiata – Radiated rat snake

In addition to these, Paul “DOR Specialist” Norberg found a DOR King Cobra hatchling. That was super-exciting because it gave me a few more data points about where they might be hatching.

We found snakes in trees, mud puddles, bushes, dirt, lakes, streams, restaurants, stream banks, wet grass, on concrete roads and sidewalks, and in caves.

We added a trip to Phang Nga for this event, and that was a good time after I sorted the first van driver who was falling asleep at the wheel! I hit him to wake him up, and though insisting he was “OK NOW!” We chose to wait it out for another van to come and pick us up about midway through the trip.

Huge thanks to Mike Bailey of “Exotic Fishing Thailand” in Phang Nga, for his hospitality and for letting us free-roam his vast estate to find snakes! Thanks Mike! (http://ExoticFishingThailand.com).

Heartfelt thanks to Bela, Dommy, Cat, John Paul, Paul, Stu, and Cord for a perfect event. Best time I’ve had catching snakes in a long time!

And lastly, a special thanks to John Paul Foenander who gets the award for finding the most snakes during the event!

And lastly after that, a respectful thanks to Alex Gillard for the most remarkable find of 2017 – a T. venustus in a mass of vines about three meters away that most of us still couldn’t see after he pointed it out!

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