I spent 3 weeks in Eddy County in 2010, as I’ve mentioned about a million times by this point, a good part of which were looking for this guy. It’s a Black Tailed Rattlesnake, Crotalus molossus molossus, and oh man … these guys are a lot harder to find out there than they are back home in Arizona (at least for me that is).
This is the same snake as I featured recently, sitting in a crack in a rock. We saw him there, and returned later to see him sitting out, and got some more photos. These are probably my favorites from the trip, and I must again say that this is my favorite species 🙂
I can’t believe how awesome this snake is; blacktails make me pretty happy to be around. The latter half, as you can see, is more or less patternless, while the front half has a simplified pattern reduced to single yellow chevrons fully encased in that rich brown. It’s very different than what I’m used to here in Arizona, and I hope to visit this individual again next time I’m out that way.
