Here’s one of the tiny, ground dwelling species that are incredibly common throughout Arizona, Smith’s Black Headed Snake (Tantilla hobartsmithi). Of course they’re harmless, but they still scare a good amount of people around town since they’re able to easily gain entry into homes. Whenever I get a call from my snake removal service to remove a snake from INSIDE a home, it’s often one of these guys.
I know the sun just came up, but you don’t have to be so rude.
Here’s a rather large (by large, I mean about 14″) nightsnake from New Mexico. This species is of a tougher build and more squat than the Desert species I’m used to seeing in Phoenix … pretty cool, and puts on quite a threat display that I wasn’t expecting. I regretfully didn’t get any good photos of the display before it balled up into this more familiar “uncle” pose.
One of the only snakes of this trip, we saw this medium-sized gophersnake early on. They tend to show up like that, on the drive into the prime location, giving the false impression that it’s going to be a great day. It was a great day of friends and field of course, but snakes were a bit sparse. Regardless, we were happier to see this guy than he was to see us.
The camo is especially effective in the low sun of late-day. I realized that I would never even see these guys if they didn’t always run off when I approach. Someone should tell them to stay put, because they’re way too easy to catch … even by big slow herpers like me.
Here’s a little, baby black-necked gartersnake (Thamnophis cyrtopsis) from Yavapai county, one of the first I’d ever seen in this area, and a good distance from any water source.
Near Phoenix, I’m not used to seeing frogs. One of the nice things about the Southern half of our state is that about any body of water you look in will have a lot of them. Hopefully, they’re these guys, and not the invasive bullfrogs that destroy native waterways.
After a long day of hiking a little over a year ago, we found a longnosed snake (Rhinocheilus lecontei) under some trash. It was about the happiest I’ve ever been to see a longnose!
I noticed these guys are a bit larger where I was in New Mexico. Anyone know the species of this lady(?)
Here are 3 of the 50+ reasons in the last two weeks why I’ve been slow to respond to email, write on my blog, or eat anything not served in a bag.
I went on a short afternoon hike today to see if I could find some diamondbacks, or at least work on my new boots a bit before my big trip to PA in 3 weeks. Within 15 minutes I found a skinny, female diamondback out sniffing through some brush, and was far enough away so that she hadn’t noticed me. Rather than get a photo and move on looking for more, I thought I’d just spend the sunset time following her to see what she does.
Here she is as found.
She nosed around the bush for awhile, and eventually decided to move to the other side.
… and after looking in and out of a few holes along the opposite side, she coiled up against the warm dirt wall, which is how I left her a few minutes later without so much as a tongue flick in my direction.
So … I’ve really neglected my blog lately, and that’s all due to good things. I’ve been getting out and finding snakes as much as I can, and an evening at the computer just isn’t as appealing now as it is in the cooler months when I can’t imagine a billion snakes crawling around the desert for me to find. Still, I’ll try my best to put up some of the finds, but I’ll save the really good stuff for the end of the year.
Here’s one of dozens of Mojave rattlesnakes one can see out on the crawl in April, this one being a little darker and interesting looking than is typical for the Phoenix area.
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