About Owen Caldwell
Owen Caldwell covers wild mammals, reptiles and amphibians for The Faunalist. His guides answer the questions people actually have when something crosses the yard at dusk: what left this scat, is this snake venomous, what does a young one of this species look like, and what does it eat. He works from state wildlife agency material, university extension publications, USGS range data and museum herpetology collections, and he cross checks any identification claim against at least two of them before it is published. Where a field mark is unreliable or the sources disagree, he says so in the article rather than picking the tidier answer. Owen Caldwell is a pen name used by a member of the Faunalist editorial team. He holds no wildlife biology degree and does not claim one. What he brings is patient research, careful sourcing and years of reading tracks and sign in the field.
What Owen covers
- North American mammals
- Reptiles
- Snakes
- Amphibians
- Animal tracks and scat identification
- Wildlife behavior
- Herpetology basics
Browse every article by Owen Caldwell.
How these guides are researched
Mammal, reptile and amphibian guides are built from state wildlife and natural resources agency material, which is the most reliable source for what actually lives in a given state, supported by USGS range data, university extension wildlife programs and museum herpetology collections. Venomous species identification is treated as a safety question: field marks come from official state resources, unreliable marks are flagged as unreliable, and no article suggests handling a snake to identify it.
Identification, range and safety claims are checked against at least two independent sources before publishing, and where the sources disagree the article says so instead of picking the tidier answer. The full process, including which institutions we treat as authoritative for each subject area, is on our editorial standards page.
A note on the byline
Owen Caldwell is a pen name used by a member of The Faunalist editorial team, and the portrait above is an illustration rather than a photograph. The person behind the name writes this subject area and nothing else. We do not claim degrees, licences or field credentials that our writers do not hold, and anything that needs a professional is sent to one inside the article. Our reasoning for working this way is set out on the editorial standards page.
Corrections and contact
Found something wrong in one of these guides, or have a question about a source? Write to [email protected] with the article name and what you found. Corrections are checked against our sources and made in the article itself.