Kelly and I went out for a casual evening hike in the White Tank Mountains, West of Phoenix tonight. The goal was some fresh air, but reptiles were welcome to join us of course.
The usual butt-ton of Common Side-Blotched Lizards (Uta stansburiana) lept from rock to rock trying their best to ward off the intruding apes with their terrifying display of pushups and twitching. Somehow we carried on. It was interesting to see that quite a large portion of them were missing their tails.
On the way out, we decided to drive through the rest of the park for the hell of it. We found some old people, and a nice young Western Diamondback Rattlesnake (Crotalus atrox).
We got kicked out of the park and ended up slamming on the brakes a half mile out the gate for a Mojave Rattlesnake (Crotalus scutulatus).
While taking pictures of the Mojave, Kelly looked up and saw a Sonoran Sidewinder (Crotalus cerastes cercobombus) scootching his way towards us. I went and got him for some pictures and for a few minutes had the luck of two species buzzing at us at the same time. The cerastes calmed down long before the Mojave did. Here’s a picture and one a little closer up.
Total time from our front door out and back to home with dinner was only 3 hours. It was a good ending to a shit of a day.
Tags: arizona herping, Crotalus atrox, crotalus cerastes cercobombus, Crotalus scutulatus, Field Herping, Uta stansburiana, white tank mountains
