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… 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.

Painted Turtle

Here’s a large spider making friends with a damselfly.

Best Pals

Another spider hanging out in the grass … this one a little more pointy than the other.

Potential Afternoon-Ruinner

The soft shelled turtle:

Spiny Softshelled Turtle

Here’s an HDR picture of evening clouds moving in from the South.

Standing in a big shadow

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).

Crotalus atrox

A young male tarantula out and about:

Tarantula

… 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

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 3rd, 2008 at 4:50 pm and is filed under Field Herping, Field Trips, Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.