Saturday, August 28, 2010

They Hatched!!!!

They hatched last night! Two are still just poking their heads out, but all are well!








Tuesday, August 10, 2010

A recent rescue

Thursday at about 10:00 pm I got a call from one of our salesman saying there was a snake in the warehouse in a box and that it was getting out. I asked him what kind of snake and he had no idea. I asked him what it looked like and he said it was tan. I told him to put something on top of the box and that I would be right there. We went down to the warehouse and found the snake attached to a glue trap. There was also a checkered whiptail attached that was already dead. Vegetable oil neutralizes the glue, so I took it home and started working to get the snake unglued. It came pretty easy, the hardest part was dealing with the angry coachwhip! Here are some pictures of the process:


































Josh

Sunday, August 8, 2010

I love Spadefoots!!!!!

I was watching the weather and saw that it was raining south of town, so I discussed it with my wife and we decided to go for a cruise. We went to dinner first and then I got a call from Bill (bgorum). He told me he was going south and wanted to know if we wanted to come with. He came and picked us up and we commenced our cruise. We got into our target area and started seeing these on the road:

Couch's Spadefoot

juvie Woodhouse Toad

another couch's

We could hear a chorus of spadefoots and tried to locate them. It was not hard, but it ended up being on private property. We drove a little further and found another and found a road that went right next to it. We found this going on:


Bill decided to get a closer look:

So did I:














We could hear another species in the midst of the sheep-calling. Bill located it:

New Mexico Spadefoot









showing off his spades

We thought we heard yet another species and started to look for it, we never did but we did spot these, can you see them:

Here they are closer:


We continued our search and found no other ponds but there were several out on the roads. Here is what we looked like afterwards:

We moved on to see if we could locate some snakes. We found a DOR gopher snake, a DOR prairie rattlesnake and this little gem:

Desert Kingsnake (lifer!)


I just added this video to youtube of a New Mexico Spadefoot calling with the chorus of Couch's Spadefoots in the background.



Thanks for looking!
Josh