I find ranking experiences beyond diffcult - not to say patently absurd. It's too complex, there are too many variables, besides which the quantification and ranking itself seems to devalue the experience, particularly, of course, in the case of those not making the cut.
After all, what are the best finds? The childhood finds that sparked the interest or fueled the fire? The rarest species? The ones you worked the hardest for? The surprises? The prettiest specimens? The most unusual looking? A range extension, regardless how minute? The species you have a special affinity for just because they were the ones that happened to be featured in
that book you borrowed from the library over and over again when you were six? The ones where you were fortunate enough to be privy to some particularly interesting behaviour? The ones where the spatial and temporal setting made them part of some greater story of some perceived personal significance?
Perusing this thread, I enjoy reading a great diversity of reasons behind people's choices and seeing a similarly great diversity of species, the obvious show off ones as well as the seemingly more humble. I'm happy to contribute a couple of short stories and crappy pics myself as well, even if I have a hard time limiting myself to three.
I considered listing childhood memories...
my first large snapping turtle in the lake behind our apartment that, along with other turtles and frogs, got me hooked on herps when I was 5...
my first snake, by then already mythical, evasive creatures to me, a beautiful smooth green snake found moving about in the grass while hiking in Shenandoah NP...
my first Danish (& European(& viperine)) snake, a cute little adder basking in the heather at my feet on a school outing to an open air museum,...
I also considered not listing individual finds but herping days / stops / trips...
my final stop in the last hour of daylight on my first dedicated full time herping trip abroad to Krk when everything suddenly came out as the sun broke through after a shower and I ended up seeing 20 snakes, a single tortoise and innumerable frogs, toads and lizards including E. quatuorlineata, T. hermanni and P. apodus, though common and widespread all highly desired new species at the time...
the first day of my next trip – to Israel – when exhausted from not sleeping all night after flying via Riga I followed a succesful morning searching at semi random stops in unfamiliar habitat with an equally succesful similar short late afternoon search and topped it off with my first – and still best – night of road cruising, the latter in the good company of Guy and Aviad. Guy played Simon and Garfunkel in the car and they still bring back memories every time. Totals for the day were 7 snake species & 7 lizard species supplemented by a very impressive array of invertebrate, avian and mammalian species as well. Among the 11 new herp species were
Eryx jaculus, Atractaspis engaddensis, Echis coloratus and
Daboia palaestinae, each of which would have made my day by themselves...
two succesive days of casual short morning trips to one of my local spots in the spring of 2010. I didn't see impressive numbers of specimens nor species, didn't see any new species either but what I did see in terms of action and variability more than made up for it – fighting anguis, mating anguis, an impressive palet of berus coloration – solid black, solid brown with faint straight stripe, regular brown females, freshly shed silver and black male and finally the most beautiful berus I have ever seen, turquoise with caramel stripe, dotted with black at the edge of every zig and every zag, basking in fornt of a natrix mating ball. The icing on the cake was the strangest looking aberration I have seen in the wild in the form of a ghostly plae anguis...
I could have chosen any of the above... and more... instead I chose...
my first and to date only
Cerastes gasperetti – because Cerastes are always cool, this specimen was spectacularly beautiful, pink with yellow spots and exquisite facial scalation, and finding it came as a reward for hard work. On my first visit to Israel I spent a long, tired night by myself, getting lost in the dunes along the Jordanian border while searching for tracks and finding nothing but geckoes. The story seemed to repeat itself on my second visit when finally, back at the car I found a track and with difficulty followed it to my quarry across long stretches where it disappeared in the coarse sand beween the dune tops...
my first and to date only
Varanus griseus – because it's the newest among my favourite finds, hence closer to mind, and because I finally found it after searching in vain on three previous trips. Moreover, I found it quietly moseying about, doing its thing in its habitat, not paying attention to me, rather than fleeing in the distance, crossing a road, or trapped at the bottom of a well. My photograph of this and the following favourite – undoubtedly the two worst we will see in this thread - are testament to my exaltation at seeing them. As I am a lousy photographer and generally a bit high strung, I tend to lose my focus on photography when I get excited about a find causing me to either end up scaring the critter off, shoot all my pics with the wrong settings or just somehow trip myself up in another, more creative fashion...
Yes, it's a crappy pic of a plain old boring common spadefoot except... to me it's the most exciting of anurans, included here because I needed an amphibian, I needed something local, and I spent more time searching for these than any other domestic herp species before finding one, faintly hearing it calling from the bottom of the pond when I finally made it out to proper habitat at the very best time of year, my effort lending them a peculiar, mystical and elusive quality in my mind's eye. To this day they hold a special allure for me, and seeing an ovipositing couple in broad daylight was the domestic highlight of my season this past year.
Well, there it is, ask me again tomorrow, odds are you'll get another answer, perhaps a coral, rattler and chameleon, perhaps a gator, newt and smoothie, perhaps...
). There are basically 3 ways to find death adders: To herp at night and hope that snakes will be on the move (roads, walking trails, etc.); to investigate with rakes or others piles of leaves, which is time-consuming, not really elegant and quite boring; and finally to be lucky 
. After trying the second method for 1 day without any success, I thought I will not manage to observe this special snake in South Australia. However, in the morning of January 1st, as I was walking few meters away from the beach, I had the great chance to observe and photograph this nice specimen in situ:
