Taiwan (October 2023)
Trimeresurus stejnegeri
Another short getaway during a long public holiday weekend.
We spent a couple of nights in Fuxing District, mostly road cruising in search of snakes. Sadly, we were yet again unlucky with the weather as the temperatures dropped solely for the length of our stay (!) and the nights were really cold, dramatically slowing down all animal activity. Just before our arrival and shortly after our departure it was much warmer, with many sightings of the species we hoped to see, urgh.
There also was a huge landslide, causing the main and only road to be open only for a few 15 mins slots during the day and it was completely closed at night. This meant we had to adjust our plans and stay on two different sides on the landslide to cover a larger herping area.
Anyway, we still managed to see over 60 snakes in a span of two chilly and humid nights along with many moths so we can’t really complain. It’s just under 2hr flight from Hong Kong, so we’ll definitely come back in summer!
Now, moving on to the herps.
The very first snake we saw was a red-banded snake (Lycodon rufozonatus)…
…followed by dozens of Chinese green tree vipers (Trimeresurus stejnegeri), which literally haunted us throughout both nights. We saw 61 individuals of this species in total. Well, actually more than that, it’s just that the ones we haven’t counted were a bit flat (check out the video to see what we mean).
We also encountered a Formosa slug snake (Pareas formosensis) merrily exploring a drain. Such a cutie pie.
Pareas formosensis
Other snake species known and rather common to that area will have to wait for our return, possibly next year. On our way back we saw two road kills, a huge brown-spotted pit viper (Protobothrops mucrosquamatus) and a gorgeous red mountain ratsnake (Oreocryptophis porphyraceus) which was a bummer. Artur had tears in his eyes at that point…
As you can see from the photos and the video below (2:27 onward), mothing was - unexpectedly - fabulous. We hadn’t even dreamt of seeing so many wonderful species, and that was over a single night.
We also found a good spot for jumping spiders and other invertebrates, where Karolina had a chance to test her new Olympus. Below are the results.
And Artur’s Canon shots of the invertebrates in that area.
One of the biggest amphibian highlights of this trip was an encounter with a Moltrecht's green tree frog (Zhangixalus moltrechti). An absolutely stunning frog with beautiful webbed feet. We also spotted a few Taiwan common toads (Bufo bankorensis), Swinhoe’s frogs (Odorrana swinhoana) and Sauter’s brown frogs (Rana sauteri). Amphibians didn’t come out in big numbers during our trip, even though the habitat was perfect, most likely due to poor weather conditions.
