Superstition Mountains, Arizona

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I know it’s not field herping, but the babies started coming out of their eggs today and I had to take some pictures.

Here they are coming out and opening their eyes for the first time.

Bearded Dragons Hatching

Here they are with my ipod shuffle for size comparizon.

Baby Bearded Dragons

Here’s one that’s about 20 minutes old on his dad’s head. He isn’t sure what to think of them, other than that they probably look delicious.

Tiny Bearded Dragon with His Dad

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Last weekend was supposed to be the weekend where I don’t go herping. My brother is in town and I planned on wasting the entire time drinking and eating horrible things. Friday night went well, but by Saturday morning at 8 a.m. I was halfway up a mountain North of Phoenix.

The place kind of sucked. There was automatic gunfire from pretty much every direction. I realize they were most likely shooting at targets placed up against hillsides, but that’s a lot of trust to place in people. The other established trails were equally occupied with the most redneckingest redneckmobiles and douchy mountain bikers with their silly little hats and “I’m so much better than you” neon spandex.

I only found two things that I felt like taking pictures of.

First was a nice tarantula crawling across a wash; the first I’ve found this year. I’ve since seen two more, and will see hundreds more by years end. I wish I knew how to differentiate species.

Tarantula

The next thing was this Desert Spiny Lizard (Sceloporus magister) that I was able to sneak up to within a foot or two of before he woke up and bolted.

Desert Spiny Lizard

I also saw a lot of Tiger Whiptails, though I didn’t stop to photograph them. I like them. They don’t seem as good as the other lizards at disappearing into the brush. Usually when I’ve disturbed one, it crashes loudly through the grass and makes no attempt to hide its location.

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We started early and headed West, nearly all the way to Parker. Lots happened, but nothing really worth mentioning. Eventually we ended up in the Harquahala Mountains looking for boas, which is about as tedious a practice as you’ll find in this hobby. It wasn’t long before we were back out in an old favorite place looking for the usual stuff.

First snake, a Long-Nosed Snake (Rhinocheilus lecontei):

Rhinocheilus lecontei

Of course we saw a good number of Sonoran Sidewinders (Crotalus cerastes cercobombus):

Crotalus cerastes cercobombus

Then beers, tequila, more beers, a mangy cat, and sleep. Somehow I still woke up at around 7 and took off to see if anyone else was waking up. I ended up knocking 2 animals off my life-list!

Here’s something I’ve never seen before … a cerastes out crawling around in the morning sun:

Crotalus cerastes cercobombus

About 5 minutes later I found my first live Coachwhip (Masticophis flagellum piceus). I’ve seen quite a few dead Coachwhips on the sides of roads and had glimpses as they fly across the road, but never had the chance to get close to one.

Coachwhip

Here’s a Tiger Whiptail (Aspidoscelis tigris) who for some reason wasn’t at all scared of me. He let me sit down right next to him and watch him root through the dirt and do other “busy lizard” tasks, and even came walking right up to me once.

Tiger Whiptail

Tiger Whiptail

Then a Desert Patch-Nosed Snake (Salvadora hexalepis hexalepis):

Salvadora hexalepis hexalepis

Desert Patch-Nosed Snake

Then a SECOND Coachwhip:

Coachwhip

Coachwhip

A Desert Iguana (Dipsosaurus dorsalis):

Dipsosaurus dorsalis

… and finally a female Long-Nosed Leopard Lizard; my first.

Long-Nosed Leopard Lizard

Habitat:

desertscrub

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A couple of snakes from a slow night on the West end of Maricopa County. We found the usual bunch of Sonoran sidewinders (Crotalus cerastes) out and about. They don’t have a lot of variability, so if you’ve seen one you’ve pretty much seen them all. I usually get out to get some pictures of the first one, but after that they get an escort off the road and that’s about it.

Crotalus cerastes cercobombus, the Sonoran Sidewinder:

Crotalus cerastes cercobombus

We also found a Mojave Shovel-Nosed Snake (Chionactis occipitalis occipitalis). We haven’t seen one of these since the spring of 2006, so it was nice to get some photos. It was a little over a foot long, and that’s about their upper limit. They’re tiny little sand-loving snakes that spend most of the time in or under the loose dirt in the desertscrub.

Chionactus occipitalis occipitalis

Mojave Shovel-Nosed Snake

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The last few times out have been a little slower. On the 13th, Kris and I went up to Yavapai County to look for some Speckled Rattlesnakes (Crotalus Mitchellii) or maybe a Rosy Boa (Lichanura trivirgata), but struck out. Even that night cruising back to town in the lower elevations that all indications showed would be nice and warm dropped down into the 60’s within minutes of the sun setting.

We did find a young, sleepy Regal Horned Lizard (Phrynosoma solare) laying in the road. He sat perfectly still while we played with our cameras. The only other notable critter of the trip was the bark scorpion that I posted a picture of awhile back.

Regal Horned Lizard - Phrynosoma solare

A few nights later Kris and I again had a dead night West of Phoenix. We found one decently-behaved Long-nosed Snake (Rhinocheilus lecontei).

Long-nosed Snake

Then, my girlfriend Kelly and I went camping near Payson for the weekend. It was pretty cold all weekend, but I did find a couple of Wandering Gartersnakes (Thamnophis elegans vagrans) near the stream. 2 would have been 4 if my hands were a bit faster and I werent’ so worried about dropping my new camera into the water.

Here’s the first one:

Wandering Gartersnake

The next 2 pictures are of another one resting in the shade maybe 20 feet away.

\"Can I eat this big biped coming this way?\"

\"No! Hisssss spit fft!\"

… and that’s pretty much it for the last week. Hopefully the rest of April will treat me a little better.

moon

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Kelly and I went out for a casual evening hike in the White Tank Mountains, West of Phoenix tonight. The goal was some fresh air, but reptiles were welcome to join us of course.

The usual butt-ton of Common Side-Blotched Lizards (Uta stansburiana) lept from rock to rock trying their best to ward off the intruding apes with their terrifying display of pushups and twitching. Somehow we carried on. It was interesting to see that quite a large portion of them were missing their tails.

Uta stansburiana in the White Tank Mountains

On the way out, we decided to drive through the rest of the park for the hell of it. We found some old people, and a nice young Western Diamondback Rattlesnake (Crotalus atrox).

Crotalus atrox

We got kicked out of the park and ended up slamming on the brakes a half mile out the gate for a Mojave Rattlesnake (Crotalus scutulatus).

Crotalus scutulatus

While taking pictures of the Mojave, Kelly looked up and saw a Sonoran Sidewinder (Crotalus cerastes cercobombus) scootching his way towards us. I went and got him for some pictures and for a few minutes had the luck of two species buzzing at us at the same time. The cerastes calmed down long before the Mojave did. Here’s a picture and one a little closer up.

Sonoran Sidewinder

Crotalus cerastes cercobombus

Total time from our front door out and back to home with dinner was only 3 hours. It was a good ending to a shit of a day.

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Taken today in Yavapai Co., Arizona.

hdr-cent-sculpturatus-041208

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Things have cooled off a little so we haven’t seen much in the last week or two. We found ourselves out there on Saturday after a likewise bunk fishing trip and saw nothing but maybe 5-6 dead Coachwhips (Masticophis flagellum), a Mojave (Crotalus scutulatus) that we watched get hit by a car as we waited, and a nice longnose snake (first of the year). I got some decent pictures on my old camera and was surprised the next day to see they’d all disappeared from the card somehow.

We went for a little hike West of Phoenix today and found only one snake. It was nice to get out regardless. Temps were down to 71 or so already at 6pm, so we were surprised to even find what we did.

Pretty place:

arizona upland desert scrub

A little HDR:

hrd-road

Arizona Upland Desert Scrub

On the way home we found a baby Mojave Rattlesnake crossing the road. It was only about 70F out, so it was kind of a surprise.

c-scutulatus1-041008

My girlfriend Kelly has a few pictures of that longnose on her camera that I’ll try and steal so I at least have one of that speces on the site. Either way, there will be hopefully some more animals on here after the nice warm weekend coming up.

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Here’s a Western Lyresnake (Trimorphodon biscutatus) I found with Bill Sloan from the AHA last summer sometime in the mountains South of Bagdad, Arizona. I’ll probably have a lot of these ‘found this in my old stuff’ kind of posts in the next month or so as I streamline my process on this computer with my new software.

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It was the usual Diamondback. By the time I got up there, it had crawled into the neighbors’ yard and fallen asleep. It really wasn’t happy to be woken up! It was probably one of the most aggressive atrox I have ever encountered.

After being released he crawled to the base of a bush and calmed down pretty quickly for a picture.

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Floyd and I went hiking through the desert scrub and low-laying foothills West of the White Tank mountains for a few hours this afternoon. Temperatures were in the mid 70’s, and there was a good amount of wind. We saw a lot of the usual whiptails, urosaurus, zebra-tailed lizards, but not much else. We did run across a young Diamondback Rattlesnake (Crotalus atrox) and a Desert Horned Lizard and got a few quick pictures.

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