My friend Diego had never seen an Arizona Black Rattlesnake, Crotalus cerberus, before. I’d only seen a handful myself, and my position just North of Phoenix puts me in a good place to see a lot of them, if I’d just get up there and try it out. We decided to meet up and try a new spot and see what happens. What happened were 4 cerberus in about an hour and a half!
When we first got there, we decided to hike a running creek to see what was out. All we found were Canyon Treefrogs, Hyla arenicolor, and a few thousand crawfish.
Then we waited for dark. Almost immediately after we started our new search, we found an absolutely amazing-looking male cerberus on the move. We both flipped out. It can’t get any darker than this. Although there is some pattern shown in the photograph, I’ve since seen this snake become pitch-black without a trace of pattern whatsoever. This one came home with me, and is sleeping in an enclosure 5 feet behind me as I type this.
Here’s a crappy picture of Diego playing “Try not to lose any fingers”.
About 5 minutes later, we found a second cerberus. This one was a little more typical-looking, with cream colored bands and various other chocolate hues crossing the body.
We found 2 more within the next hour, only one of which we photographed due to, uh, technical difficulties. The only 4 snakes we found that night were the ones we were looking for, which is a pretty cool night as far as we were concerned. Crotalus cerberus is quickly becoming one of my favorite Arizona snake.
Tags: Arizona Black Rattlesnake, canyon treefrog, Crotalus cerberus, hyla areinicolork, maricopa county, rattlesnakes, snake
Great shots Brian and what a night! Wish I could have been out there with you. What were the conditions that you found all the cerberus?
Hey Dave, it really was a surprisingly good night … one right after the next. The conditions were surprisingly dry and clear, but I think what really helped was that the moon was behind the mountains. As soon as it popped up the light levels were much higher and we didn’t see anything else for our time there.
I absolutely love the face shot second from the bottom. Excellent detail!
The bottom photo is what my cerb, Fluffy, looks like. Really black and only getting blacker w/ each shed. MAN, I love that spot!!! BTW, I always come out of there dry after a hike. Did Diego decide to go for a swim?:D
Got any photos?
I think he did get kinda wet, haha. If I recall, we stuck close to the water for a good while.