bschwamb's Favorites

To this date, the second largest Burmese python caught in the Florida Keys. The animal was located in a novel way, it had eaten a Virginia opossum outfitted with a satellite telemetry collar. After a set period of inactivity, the collar would send off signal indicating that the animal was dead. Well this happened, and then the collar would move a few hundred feet, then go back on mortality signal, then move again and so on. After a week of this, we decided to go see what was up with the animal, so we tracked it to the hardwood-mangrove edge underground, odd for a opossum. We set up a grid of camera traps and baited them with cat food and no opossum showed up. A few days later, we tried digging at the point where the signal was strongest, thinking that maybe the collar slipped and after an hour we saw scales! We were able to extract the python that day after quite a fight pulling her from her burrow.
(1) Myself and other CLNWR employees holding the python
(2) First image of the python in the underground cavity
(3) Python being measured
(4) Python's enormous head
(5) Location of the collar (RIP Prairie Dog) in the python's GIT
(6) X-Ray of the collar within the python
Point submitted to EDDMapS and under review.
TL: 383.54cm
SVL: not taken
Mass: 28122.7kg
Sex: Female

This tiny, striking Xylaria species, with its nearly naked perithecia, has become the poster child for Xylariaceae research in Los Cedros. Roo and I thought they looked a bit like these in cross section:

These are Kodama, the forest spirits of Japanese folklore, as portrayed by Hayao Miyazaki in his epic 1997 film, Princess Mononoke.

This is likely the first record of X. tucumanensis from anywhere outside Argentina, and as such, significantly extends the species’ known range.

Read more about this enigmatic Xylaria and check out an extensive key to the genus for northern Argentina in the following paper:

Hladki, A.I.; Romero, A.I. 2010. A preliminary account of Xylaria in the Tucuman province, Argentina, with a key to species from the Northern Provinces. Fungal Diversity. 42:79-96

Substrate: corticate standing dead wood (post), ~3 cm diam (same as Observation 264296)

Habitat: Northwest Andean montane forest (NT0145)

Collector(s): D. Newman & R. Vandegrift

Collection #: RLC1378

Photomicrography and molecular data forthcoming

Picked up Pinus wallichiana pinecone after several leaps and starts. Flew with it. Dropped out of sight. Soon after, pirouetting with another Red-tail, this one snapped off a pinecone from high up on the same Blue Pine and seemed to try to pass it to the other bird, turning in flight to launch it horizontally as opposed to simply dropping it. The other hawk did not catch the falling pinecone.

Soaked from the foggy morning. Uncommon colouration, but coat colour is no longer considered a good indicator of dingo purity with around 5% of dingoes naturally being black. Dingoes in the Northern Territory are very pure and therefore it is likely this one is too.

Saw this male fly into the Monk Parakeet nest atop the 25th St. entrance gate. Just barely caught the bird making an exit in these pics.

Witnessed this behavior in Sept. 2019 here, too. Male flew in, perched in hole facing out for about five minutes, before flying off. See: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/61772125

This qualifies as one of the stranger observations I made. This is on an island near the state park where I studied otters.
We were looking for Alligator Lizards when this good sized dog appeared out of of the scrub.
It was a large dog with odd looking eyes. My initial reaction was Coydog given its odd appearance but actual Coydogs are rare or so I have read.
I could very well be just a large feral domestic dog too. I saw no collar and it was extremely shy.
I would love to get any opinions about this odd looking feral dog.