Western Diamondback Rattlesnake, Crotalus atrox

Crotalus atrox

Western Diamondback Rattlesnake

One more of the little lady …

Crotalus atrox

Here’s another one found a ways off, a male, with milky pre-shed eyes.

Diamondback

Diamondback Rattlesnake

Here’s his ladyfriend/roomie out hunting early one morning. There are at least 4 different diamondbacks that I’ve seen that live in this one hole, and 14 total within a half mile that can be visited with regularity. The hole is within 20 feet of a popular walking trail, too, but from the tracks they leave it looks like they don’t go that direction. Good for passive hikers, good for the snakes.

Here’s a big old boy I found one evening just before the sun went over the Guadalupe mountains.

Here’s another one from a few years back. What a beautiful snake …

My parents live in Carlsbad, so even though I didn’t find everything on my list, I know I eventually will.

Crotalus atrox

Crotalus atrox

Crotalus atrox

… about an hour and a half later, we found another one on the move near a river. He posed nicely for us.

Diamondback Rattlesnake in Yavapai County, Arizona

Crotalus atrox

We also found this moth hanging out near the water’s edge.

moth

Here are a trio of diamondbacks found along the way:

Diamondbacks

diamondback

atrox

diamondback

Here are a couple of the many canyon treefrogs we saw as well.

Frog

canyon treefrog

… and some indian art on a rock, right near where we parked.

art

Here’s about the scariest thing you can find in Arizona, an open nest of bees. Fortunately, these guys usually make enough noise so that you can see them well before you piss them off.

bees

And finally, a patchnosed snake we found on the way out to our next location.

Patch-Nosed Snake

Here is the photo they selected, for the month of Novembe, of a Western Diamondback Rattlesnake (Crotalus atrox) I photographed in April.

Crotalus atrox

Here is a photo of some Canyon Treefrogs (Hyla arenicolor) that was selected as an honorable mention; also photographed in April of this year.

Hyla arenicolor

Here is more infor

This first is a fairly typical-looking Western Diamondback Rattlesnake (Crotalus atrox). The atrox I see in this area of Arizona tend to be a little more colorful than the dirt-grey variety I often encounter up near Phoenix.

Diamondback Rattlesnake from Arizona

Here’s another that was found less than 100 feet away, about 20 minutes later. It’s a neonate atrox that’s maybe a few weeks old.

Baby rattlesnake

Notice the button on the tail. A common myth is that baby rattlesnakes are born without rattles; this is absolutely false. This snake cannot yet rattle of course, since it takes at least 2 segments of rattle to make any sound at all.

Another myth is that baby rattlesnakes are somehow more deadly than the adults. I’ve heard lots of reasons … more potent venom, unable to control their release, etc; these must be taken with a bit of understanding and relation. I have observed that a greater proportion of young snakes are aggressive right out of the gate. I assume this is to do with the poor little things being only a few inches long and on the menu for just about everything in the desert. As for their venom being more dangerous … young diamondbacks can have more potent venom (The Venomous Reptiles of Arizona, Low / Schwalbe / Johnson). Although it is possibly more deadly drop-for-drop, a young atrox is not able to inject the same amount of venom as an adult. I see all over the place (including the CDC website, until earlier this year) that babies are more dangerous because they cannot control their venom yield. Everything a pencil-sized snake has just doesn’t compare to the danger posed by even a fraction of a large adult. It also has a smaller mouth, fang-size, and strike range. There are several factors to consider to gauge the overall danger a snake poses; not just venom. The point: leave rattlesnakes of ALL sizes alone and head the other way. Your uncle/neighbor/co-worker might be right about a lot of things, but he’s wrong on this one.

baby rattlesnake

These tiny babies are out in force of many species at this time, and are pretty easily found as they wander around without an established home range. Cute little things.

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Here are a few I’ve found within 2 days in 2009, within 70 miles of eachother.

This one was found in an interesting area along the New Mexican border with Arizona, where I have seen much more variety in this species than in other places. It has a beautiful red coloration.

Red-Phase Western Diamondback Rattlesnake

Western Diamondback Rattlesnake

Western Diamondback Rattlesnake

This second snake was MASSIVE. It was probably the largest diamondback I’ve ever seen; right around 5′. Although this isn’t too uncommon in other places like Texas, here in Arizona this is seldom achieved. The snake also has a reduced pattern, and a nice pink tail. It was also kitten-tame, which just makes it difficult to photograph. I was really impressed with this big girl.

Diamondback Rattlesnake

Western Diamondback

Here’s one with a very clean pattern with more typical coloration, and a bad attitude, resulting in the clasic “S” pose the diamondback is famous for. I had to snap these quickly, as the storm you see in the background was dropping lightning all around us. This is definitely one way to get some adrenaline into the bloodstream.

Back off man!

Crotalus atrox

Crotalus atrox

Crotalus atrox

Here’s another with a minimal pattern, which would have appeared a nice pink color in the daytime.

Crotalus atrox

Here is a very young neonate, only about the size of a pencil.

Baby Rattlesnake

… and another young snake, this one with a year or two under its belt.

Crotalus atrox

Here’s a very dark individual with a great deal of speckling in the pattern.

Crotalus atrox

… and another tiny baby with seemingly too many diamonds, and strong white bands separating them.

baby rattlesnake

You may want to note the button on this snake if you currently believe that baby rattlesnakes are born without a rattle. It is true that the thing is useless at this point, though the snake tries his little head off to scare you away by shaking it regardless. Rattlesnakes are born with a prebutton, which gains a rattle-able link by the second shed.

Baby atrox

… and one last baby just to make this post way too long.

Baby rattle snake

Even though these were found within a very short time of one another, this is only a small fraction of the incredible number of diamondbacks we found on this trip. We found a total of 82 snakes on this trip all in all, the majority being diamondbacks that were just escorted off the road. I made the mistake in the past of not photographing these snakes as often as other, less common species. In the meantime, I’ve grown a great deal more knowledgeable about rattlesnakes, and it only occurred to me after examining these pictures upon returning from this trip where I’d made a point to photograph more diamondbacks that I had been missing out on a great deal. I think that I’ve stumbled upon the shape that this hobby will take once I’ve reached the goal of seeing one of all of the reptiles in the state. That goal is finite, in fact, I am sure I’ll be able to do it within the next few years (except for maybe one or two that in all likelyhood probably don’t actually exist within Arizona), but learning about and observing the variation between each species in different localities will be endless. I’m looking forward to it.

How ironicly exciting that this realization has come with our most common, and most iconic, rattlesnake.

After finding nothing else enjoying the morning sun, we started hiking an open, rocky wash I had spotted the day before as a possible place to find our target for the trip and my favorite of the rattlesnakes I’ve encountered so far, Crotalus molossus, the Black-Tailed Rattlesnake.

Within 50 yards from our point of entry, one of my herping partners saw a Western Diamondback Rattlesnake (Crotalus atrox) hiding in a rodent activity area under a large rock. Finally the first rattlesnake of the trip!

Crotalus atrox, in situ

Western Diamondback Rattlesnake

Continuing up the wash, well’camoflauged canyon treefrogs (Hyla arenicolor) were everywhere in various forms.

Hyla arenicolor

Canyon Treefrog

Canyon treefrogs display some amazing camouflage. There are 2 hiding in this crack doing their best rock impression.

Canyon Treefrogs

The stream still had some moving water, in which each puddle was home to a good number of these lowland leopard frogs (Rana yavapaiensis).

Rana yavapaiensis

Thoughts on the subject from fellow herpers usually assume food availability and competition is a primary factor in our mini-atrox. I was doing some reading today on the topic and found found some information on supplemented food effecting growth rates (and other factors) in atrox. Although it does not infer discuss food availability in Texas versus Arizona, it does show that this is a factor that can directly result in larger or smaller animals. Interesting reading for anyone interested in the subject.

Effects of food supplementation on Western diamond-backed rattlesnakes Crotalus atrox in the Upland Sonoran Desert, Arizona, USA

Taylor E.N, Malawy M.A., Browning D.M., Lemar S.V. & DeNardo D.F. (2005) Effects of food supplementation on the physiological ecology of female Western diamond-backed rattlesnakes (Crotalus atrox). Oecologia, 144, 206-213 (added by: Showler D.A. 2006).

Here’s a fancy pants HDR picture from my new lens:

Desert North of Phoenix

I hiked around awhile and found some cool places with a lot of flat, chipped rock that looks to be good on an afternoon sometime. On the way home, look who I found out cruising around:

Crotalus atrox

It’s the second Western Diamondback Rattlesnake (Crotalus atrox) I’ve seen this year. Something that’s immediately apparent in the two instances of atrox I’ve seen up here in the Anthem area that is different than the Mesa variety I’ve seen the most in the past is the higher amount of pink coloration; especially in the face. I look forward to seeing what other variations might be present in some of the common locals.

Crotalus atrox

Crotalus atrox

He was under a pile of rocks in the homeowner’s back yard and came out all pissy, as a good rattlesnake should. He now lives in a rocky drainage area on the hill overlooking the neighborhood.

This is also the earliest in the year I’ve seen a snake out and about. Slick.

Crotalus atrox near Carefree Rd. in Phoenix

Western Diamondback Rattlesnake in Arizona

Let me out!

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.

Painted Turtle

Here’s a large spider making friends with a damselfly.

Best Pals

Another spider hanging out in the grass … this one a little more pointy than the other.

Potential Afternoon-Ruinner

The soft shelled turtle:

Spiny Softshelled Turtle

Here’s an HDR picture of evening clouds moving in from the South.

Standing in a big shadow

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).

Crotalus atrox

A young male tarantula out and about:

Tarantula

… and last for the night, a Red-Spotted Toad (Anaxyrus punctatus).

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.

Crotalus atrox

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.

Kelly with a Kingsnake

Desert Kingsnake

Desert Kingsnake

Next we found a pinkish-looking Western Diamondback Rattlesnake with a very washed out, light pattern.

Diamondback

The last snake of the evening was another nice, clean Diamondback.

Crotalus atrox

… and that’s that for this one! I’ve got a few more posts yet to make of this trip.

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

Sun-lit rocks in Arizona

Just Northeast of Douglas, 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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Superstition mountains sunset

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.

Crotalous atrox

Western Diamondback Rattlesnake

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.

Bufo punctatus

Red-Spotted Toad

… 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!

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.

Here’s a Western Diamondback Rattlesnake rescued awhile back from a home in Cave Creek. Nothing spectacular about this guy except how old it seemed. The tail was very long, and had broken off long ago, and was STILL one of the longest rattles I’d seen. He had a great temperment, and never struck or really rattled to speak of.

Crotalus atrox

Western Diamondback Rattlesnake

Crotalus atrox

Callisaurus draconoides

Callisaurus draconoides

On the way out we found a big, old Western Diamondback Rattlesnake (Crotalus atrox) crossing a wash. It was a good opportunity to try out a new lense and work out some kinks in my daytime exposures. Ya, I could just practice on inanimate objects in the backyard or something, but uh, not as fun.

Crotalus atrox

Diamondback from Arizona

Diamondback from Arizona

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.

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

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.

Click the pictures to make them big.

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