It rained on the 26th. It’s a little early, and we really wanted to just get out of the house. I knew we wouldn’t see much, if anything, but a night out cruising with no snakes is always better than a boring and hot Thursday evening hiding inside from the sun.
The clouds and smoke made for a really nice bright sunset that gave the usually colorful Superstition Mountains a desaturated, grey-green color. It was a really nice drive.
We did see a couple of young atrox out and about. This is the first one. The second was on a tight, blind curve with a cliff off to the side in an area where dumbasses regularily speed around corners without regard to which lane they’re in. He looked about the same as this one, so I just got out long enough to hurry it off the road.
Anyway… here’s the little guy. I’m not sure why, but I didn’t pay attention to the depth of field while photographing.
We also found an adult Red-Spotted Toad (Bufo punctatus) out enjoying the bump in humidity from none to almost none. I remember I hiked near this area in October, 2006, and young punctatus absolutely covered the ground. I took some time to see how many I could stack on top of eachother from big to small.
… and this last picture isn’t any good, but I always think its funny when one of these ends up on the card when trying to photograph a toad. Position the shot, shoot, look in the viewfinder and I have a nice picture of empty dirt. Escape!
Thats it for now. Hopefully I’ll get up to the task of uploading pictures from a recent trip to Utah and a fairly unproductive trip down south in the ultra-dry air of May.
Tags: arizona, Bufo punctatus, Crotalus atrox, Field Herping, herp photography, maricopa county, rattlesnakes, red-spotted toad, snakes, Superstition Mountains, Western Diamondback Rattlesnake
