… continued from parts 1, 2, 3, and 4.
We went for a short hike along the Delaware River in the afternoon. Temperatures were a little too hot to see much other than some whiptails. I did get some pictures of a softshell turtle. It was my first, so I was quite satisfied with this being the only notable animal of the trip.
First, a picture of what is probably a dinner-plate sized painted turtle making its way across the river.
Here’s a large spider making friends with a damselfly.
Another spider hanging out in the grass … this one a little more pointy than the other.
The soft shelled turtle:
Here’s an HDR picture of evening clouds moving in from the South.
After watching the bat flight from the caverns, we went out again. Pretty quickly, we found the second of the really interesting diamondbacks on the trip. A big chocolate-brown Western Diamondback Rattlesnake (Crotalus atrox).
A young male tarantula out and about:
… and last for the night, a Red-Spotted Toad (Anaxyrus punctatus).
Tags: Crotalus atrox, Diamondback, eddy county new mexico, Field Herping, hdr, herping new mexico, new mexico, punctatus, red-spotted toad, spiny softshell turtle, tarantula, Western Diamondback Rattlesnake
