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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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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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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We went out tonight and found a good 10 or so snakes in the nice, warm air. The temperatures stayed in the mid 70’s for about an hour and a half after dark, and there was a lot of movement in that time. Here’s some of what we found:

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We went for a short hike Easter evening about an hour West of Phoenix and saw lizards of all sorts. I got a few shots that might have had some promise, but am not too bright and left my ISO at 800 from some previous in-home screwing around. Lots of white on my card. Whoops! I did realize it in time, however, to get a couple shots of a cool little Desert Horned Lizard (Phrynosoma platyrhinos).

* Thanks to Jeff Williams from the AHA for the correct ID.

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We did a little exploring tonight West of Phoenix and found a new leg to our “close to home” route, as well as a few snakes! Totals:

2 Western Diamondbacks (Crotalus atrox)
3 Mojave Rattlesnakes (Crotalus scutulatus), 2 DOR
2 Sonoran Sidewinders (Crotalus cerastes cercobombus), 1 DOR

… nothing spectaular, but a good turnout for a first night out, down in the low 70’s.

When we found the first atrox, I moved it off the road for some photos. When we got to the side of the road, the bushes to my right also started buzzing with the second atrox of the evening! Obviously we were pretty excited that our first snake of the year ended up having a buddy. We got a few pictures of the first one, and then a few of the second, and left them alone.

#1:

#2:

A pretty, young Mojave Rattlesnake (Crotalus scutulatus) with an X on the tail:

A Very Calm Adult Sonoran Sidewinder (Crotalus cerastes cercobombus):

I’ve got some night-time practice to do with my camera, but otherwise a productive start to the year.

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Kelly and I finally got out of the house to try out luck in the low 70’s weather we’ve been having. We’re both still getting over being sick so lazily poking around a local mountain was a great time. We saw a lot of side blotched (Uta stansburian) and Ornate Tree (Urosaurus ornatus) lizards, but no snakes or chucks. Oh well. It was a nice day and we made the most of it by finding a nice place to sit for awhile, and for me to practice a little with some high dynamic range photography on my new camera. I saved them as high-res desktop graphics for wide-format monitors. Download them and check them out.

Regular picture of a regular lizard out looking for a girlfriend (this isn’t the HDR, obivously).

Desert HDR 1 (right-click to save as):

Desert HDR 2 (right-click to save as):

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Last night at around 5pm we got the idea to get our sick asses off the couch and maybe see if there’s something crawling on SVP. I didn’t think we’d see much, but hey … maybe. Even if I expect to see absolutely nothing, some time out driving with new music while the sun goes down is time well spent. Hopefully the sickness will end soon and I’ll actually be able to use that fancypants new camera on something out there.

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… from a trip with Kris late in 2007.

We were making our way down steep talus on the East end of the Huachuca mountains looking for C. lepidus when Kris saw something blue/black in a rock. It was too far to see in detail. The best I could do was take a zoomed photo and hope it worked out later. Click to make it big.

Finally this morning, when cleaning out some old photos, a Yarrow’s Spiny Lizard (Sceloporus jarrovi) appeared after some adjustments in photoshop. Nothing crazy, but it was driving me nuts.

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Kelly and I moved into a new house last week. My free time will thus be spent pulling tape from boxes and crushing fingertips for the remainder of this season, unfortunately. Hopefully I’ll get out to the new-to-me mountains I see to the West each morning to catch some herps laying out in the last warmth of the year. If not, I’ll begin posting again in February or so.

This year has been good. I’ve added many animals to my life-list: C. molossus, C. lepidus klauberi, C. cerberus, C. Willardi, Gyalopion canum, Thamnophis cryptosisotalus, and Heloderma suspectrum. The molossus was my first find of the year, while the tigris was my last.

My goals for next year include getting out to Eastern New Mexico to look for anything within range of my parent’s new home, and perhaps a trip to Costa rica. Who knows.

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Kelly and I went out for a quick trip to the Superstition Mountains Saturday night, not expecting to see much due to the clear sky and weekend traffic. Surprisingly, the traffic wasn’t bad at all, though things were still slow. We saw one snake once the temperature got down to reasonable Crotalus-loving levels. The one and only snake of the night was our first Crotalus tigris (Tiger rattlesnake).

I’d seen (smelled, rather) a dead C. tigris while hiking South Mountain with Floyd a few years back, not too long before I started treating field herping like a serious hobby. Of course I didn’t consider it a ‘first’, since it was dead. Still, I’ve always wanted to see a live one.

Crotalus tigris has the most potent venom of any rattlesnake. The snake was very calm, though alert, through nearly all of the photography and handling (tongs). That lasted until I slid my camera through the gravel towards it on a time-delay to get a good macro shot. It didn’t like the vibration and went apeshit. Good time to go home and watch a really stupid movie, or about 30 minutes of it anyway. We should have stayed in the mountains.