Here’s my second-ever Speckled Rattlesnake (Crotalus mitchellii) I’ve ever found. The somewhat surreal look to the pictures is due to a compositing technique known as HDR, which are becoming quite popular these days. Fortunately for me, a goo 90% of the HDR pictures out there are of old barns or graphiti, so at least I’m doing something unique.
Here’s a good example of the diamondbacks that live up in Yavapai county. A lot of the same greys we see down closer to Phoenix, but a little better contrast in my experience.
On a slow night, we found a young Black-Tailed Rattlesnake (Crotalus molossus) out and about. I got a few pictures, but the area wasn’t pose-friendly. Oh well … a nice snake regardless.
Early one morning …
“Oh, hi! Let me take a picture of you!”
“Hmm, a little out of focus. let me try agaaaIIIIIHHH!!!!”
~ The End ~
… continued from parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
Here are some more pictures from the drive back to Arizona.
That night we stayed just inside New Mexico, and spent a few hours along the border.
… when herps are few, you’ll get scenery pictures.
In the night, we found a couple toads … a Great Plains Toad (Anaxyrus cognatus) and a male Couch’s Spadefoot Toad (Scaphiopus couchii):
The amount of bugs flying all around us was just unreasonable at this point. There are usually a lot of creepy things flying around my head out there, attracted to the head lamp, but this night was just ridiculous. I was pulling crawling things out of my hair a full hour after getting back in the truck for the last time.
Anyway, that being said, here’s a little longnose snake we found who was as annoyed to be found as we were by the bugs we had to endure to get a picture. He wasn’t cooperative, and neither were we. This is the best we could do:
In the morning, I got up early to do a little hiking and see if anything was awake. I found a snake pretty quickly. It was a young Sonoran Gopher Snake (Pituophis catenifer affinis) of the usual high-pink color I usually find on this side of state.
He wasn’t happy about being woken up.
I spent some time hiking and didn’t find anything else, but it was hard to be disappointed.
I’ll end this series the same way our trip ended. While driving back to the hotel to get Kelly up and go home, I found the writhing body of a Mojave Rattlesnake. Both head and tail had been removed while the animal was still alive. Blood was splattered all around. This happened within minutes of my arrival.
This is the kind of macho bullshit perpetuated by the idiots of Sweetwater Texas in their yearly redneck festival, where hundreds of dusty people too arrogant to realize they’re internationally recognized as personified ignorance gather to see who has the biggest hat. Of course this was not in Texas, but Rodeo, New Mexico.
It’s very hard to spend so much time with these animals and not become absolutely furious when finding something like this. This is, to me, similar to how most would feel if they found a dog in the street missing its head, somehow still moving. This was in my thoughts for days. I’m not kidding when I say I hope that the severed head got off one last bite. Sad to say these were my thoughts … but I guess I don’t prefer to be out in the desert whenever I can because I like people.
… and if any residents of Sweetwater end up on this site due to some Googling … please, please, please … buy your kids a book or two, and make Wednesday “No Beating!” day.
… continued from parts 1, 2, 3, and 4.
We went for a short hike along the Delaware River in the afternoon. Temperatures were a little too hot to see much other than some whiptails. I did get some pictures of a softshell turtle. It was my first, so I was quite satisfied with this being the only notable animal of the trip.
First, a picture of what is probably a dinner-plate sized painted turtle making its way across the river.
Here’s a large spider making friends with a damselfly.
Another spider hanging out in the grass … this one a little more pointy than the other.
The soft shelled turtle:
Here’s an HDR picture of evening clouds moving in from the South.
After watching the bat flight from the caverns, we went out again. Pretty quickly, we found the second of the really interesting diamondbacks on the trip. A big chocolate-brown Western Diamondback Rattlesnake (Crotalus atrox).
A young male tarantula out and about:
… and last for the night, a Red-Spotted Toad (Anaxyrus punctatus).
… continued from part 1, 2 and 3.
In the morning we went to see the caves. I’ll keep this post separate, since it’s a lot of cave pictures, and this site isn’t called caveexplorer.com.
If you want to see more, I uploaded the full set to my Flickr account.
That’s it for this one! I have a few more posts to go.
… continued from part 1 and part 2.
We eventually arrived at my parent’s house in Carlsbad mid-morning. After relaxing a bit, we went out to an area near town to see what there is to see. I brought my parents with me as well.
Here’s my mom holding a Red-Spotted Toad (Anaxyrus punctatus formerly Bufu punctatus), followed by another picture of him.
Then we found my favorite of the desert toads, a female Couch’s Spadefoot Toad (Scaphiopus couchii) out and about. They look so weird, with the huge eyes and bony spurs of a true desert specialist. I was glad to find one and show my parents some of the cooler stuff that lives out here.
Then we found the first vinegaroon I’ve ever seen in the wild. We ended up seeing a few others, but didn’t stop. The body was a few inches long … bigger than I thought they’d be. Completely harmless, other than his looks and smells.
If you try and touch them, they get pissed quickly.
… continued from part 1.
We crossed into New Mexico about a half hour after dark and headed East. We found another young Western Diamondback Rattlesnake (Crotalus atrox) pretty quickly. It had a pretty minimal pattern on it, and had more pink coloration than I’m used to seeing in the Phoenix area.
Then we found another Desert Kingsnake (Lampropeltis getula splendida), this one a good deal larger than the last one. The first picture is Kelly holding him up.
Next we found a pinkish-looking Western Diamondback Rattlesnake with a very washed out, light pattern.
The last snake of the evening was another nice, clean Diamondback.
… and that’s that for this one! I’ve got a few more posts yet to make of this trip.
We left at about 2 in the afternoon to take the long route to the border, and then use some backroads to get to El Paso for the night.
The area along the Arizona/New Mexico border was just finished being pounded by monsoonal rain. The air was in the upper 70’s, which is a little on the cool side for late July. Everything was washed in glowing orange as the sun set, so we stopped to get some dramatic pictures of the rocks and road before the rain started in again.
Sun-lit rocks in Arizona
Just Northeast of Douglas, Arizona
It didn’t take long to find a Western Diamondback (Crotalus atrox) with the decently clean pattern we usually find in that area.
Crotalus atrox from Eastern Arizona
Then we found a nice yellow Desert Kingsnake (Lampropeltis getula splendida). I didn’t really get a good picture of him though because I didn’t see the pile of fire ants that I was standing on. One made it up my pant leg and stung me a good dozen or so times on the knee before I was able to kill it. Fire ants suck. When I’m done posting this I’m going to see if Amazon has any specials on magnifying glasses. Anyway, I got a decent picture of the snake before being driven back to the truck.
Desert Kingsnake
We were expecting the giant storm to our East to end our herping early, but it fell apart after it got dark, leaving smooth skies and lightning here and there in the distance.
With my entire leg throbbing from fire ant venom, we found a neonate Mojave Rattlesnake (Crotalus scutulatus) out trying not to be eaten in his first few days of life.
Crotalus scutulatus
Here’s a second picture zoomed out a little so you can see how tiny this little guy was. Coiled, he was about the diameter of a beer can.
Crotalus scutulatus
That’s it for now; Chinese food should be here soon. I’ll post the rest from the trip in coming days, as I am able to work through the thousand or so photos I took in the last week.
Here’s a picture of a Red-Spotted toad (Bufo punctatus) I took a few years ago. Just cleaning out some old stuff in the sort folder. In October, these guys can be found in great masses in the hills and mountains surrounding Phoenix, Arizona. This one is from the Superstition Mountains, where every overturned rock will produce 4-5 young toads when the time is right.
It rained on the 26th. It’s a little early, and we really wanted to just get out of the house. I knew we wouldn’t see much, if anything, but a night out cruising with no snakes is always better than a boring and hot Thursday evening hiding inside from the sun.
The clouds and smoke made for a really nice bright sunset that gave the usually colorful Superstition Mountains a desaturated, grey-green color. It was a really nice drive.
We did see a couple of young atrox out and about. This is the first one. The second was on a tight, blind curve with a cliff off to the side in an area where dumbasses regularily speed around corners without regard to which lane they’re in. He looked about the same as this one, so I just got out long enough to hurry it off the road.
Anyway… here’s the little guy. I’m not sure why, but I didn’t pay attention to the depth of field while photographing.
We also found an adult Red-Spotted Toad (Bufo punctatus) out enjoying the bump in humidity from none to almost none. I remember I hiked near this area in October, 2006, and young punctatus absolutely covered the ground. I took some time to see how many I could stack on top of eachother from big to small.
… and this last picture isn’t any good, but I always think its funny when one of these ends up on the card when trying to photograph a toad. Position the shot, shoot, look in the viewfinder and I have a nice picture of empty dirt. Escape!
Thats it for now. Hopefully I’ll get up to the task of uploading pictures from a recent trip to Utah and a fairly unproductive trip down south in the ultra-dry air of May.
NOTICE All images on this website are Copyright © Bryan D. Hughes and may not be copied, downloaded, printed, or otherwise recreated without permission. If you have a request, please ask me. Violators are subject to legal action.
Site designed by Bryan D. Hughes, Zigbot Media.
Entries (RSS)
and Comments (RSS).
Powered by WordPress