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
Tags: arizona, Field Herping, Gartersnake, Gila County, horned toad, Long Nose Snake, Long-nosed snake, Longnose Snake, maricopa county, Payson, phrynosoma solare, regal horned lizard, Rhinocheilus lecontei, Terrestrial Gartersnake, Thamnophis elegans vagrans, Wandering Gartersnake, Yavapai County
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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.
Tags: arizona herping, Crotalus atrox, crotalus cerastes cercobombus, Crotalus scutulatus, Field Herping, Uta stansburiana, white tank mountains
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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.
Tags: desert scrub, Field Herping, mohave, mojave, rattlesnake
Posted in Field Herping, Landscapes, Photography | 1 Comment »
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.
Tags: arizona, field herper, Field Herping, lyresnake, maricopa county, trimorphodon biscutatus, western lyresnake
Posted in Field Herping, Photography | 2 Comments »
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.
Tags: arizona, atrox, Crotalus atrox, Diamondback, phoenix, rattlesnake, Relocation
Posted in Photography, Relocation & Rescue | No Comments »
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.
Tags: atrox, Crotalus atrox, desert horned lizard, Diamondback, horned lizard, phynosoma, platyrhinos, rattlesnake
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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:
Tags: affinis, arizona, catenifer, cerastes, cercobombus, Crotalus, Field Herping, gopher snake, maricopa county, mohave, mojave, pituophis, scutulatus, sonoran gopher snake
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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.
Tags: desert horned lizard, horned lizard, horned toad, lizard, maricopa, maricopa county, phrynosoma, phrynosoma platyrhinos
Posted in Field Herping, Field Trips, Photography | No Comments »
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.
Tags: atrox, cerastes, Crotalus, Crotalus atrox, Crotalus cerastes, crotalus cerastes cercobombus, Crotalus scutulatus, Diamondback, mohave, mohave rattlesnake, mojave, mojave rattlesnake, rattlesnake, scut, scutulatus, sidewinder, sonoran sidewinder
Posted in Field Herping, Field Trips, Photography | 3 Comments »
I went shopping last night for some new hiking boots and ended up getting the same pair as I had purchased last year:
They are touted as ‘rattlesnake proof’. I have no idea why, but some herpers view wearing this kind of thing as stupid. I personally don’t see how any extra caution could possibly be laughed at … it isn’t like looking for venomous snakes is like playing checkers and you can afford to ‘lose a couple’. Also nice, they’re CACTUS-proof, waterproof, and one long boot up the calf makes them pretty damn comfortable for driving long distances to my surprise. I absolutely wore out the pair I bought last year, putting a good 50+ miles on them from what I can estimate.
I also bought this hat:
It will make me look stupid, but not as stupid as the constantly sun-burnt ears and nose of last year. It is a welcome trade.
I also got a new maglight. I can’t find my other one, and I solve my problems irresponsibly.
Tags: boots, hat, herping equipment, snake boots, snake proof boots, tilly hat
Posted in Equipment | 1 Comment »
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):
Tags: arizona, az, lizard, maricopa county, phoenix, side-blotched lizard, south mountain, stansburiana, Uta, Uta stansburiana
Posted in Field Herping, Photography | No Comments »
