Kelly and I left Friday (August 3) for Nogales, planning to herp along the way, and try and find a Brown Vine Snake the next day. We found a faded-looking Crotalus atrox (Western Diamondback) first. Great rattle on this one.
Then Kelly saw her first snake. It was a very clean looking atrox, so clean in fact that I initially thought it was a C. Scutulatus until I got out of the car. Unfortunately, I had venom from the last atrox on my lense, which killed all my shots.
Blogger is being a retard and won’t let me upload any other pictures for some reason. I’ll post them later.
We found this as one of only a few snakes on what would have been a very productful night, if it weren’t for the heavy rain. Dedicated to taking the long way home to see a snake or two, we found what ended up being the only ‘cool’ snake of the trip, a small Sonoran Coral snake out in the rain.
Later on I saw a mystery snake (that I guessed was a Black-headed snake of some sort). As I was pulling over to get it, a couple of illegal immigrants with backpacks tried to surrender to us. I guess Kelly’s Jeep does look kind of like the border patrol trucks. Not wanting to deal with it, we took off. Hours later we nearly hit a huge California King snake and I failed to find it when I ran back.
Toads were everywhere. Here’s one of hundreds of Couch’s Toads we found:
And a huge Bufo alvarius (Sonoran Desert Toad):
At the very end of the night, we took a little side trip and found an average-sized Crotalus cerastes cercobombus (Sonoran Desert Sidewinder). Then it was time for sleep.
Tags: Bufo alvarius, Field Herping, Micruroides euryxanthus, Scaphiopus couchii, Sonoran Coral Snake
my pet sonorn desert toad inice