A long sought after lifer...

I have been actively herping for over a year now and I have always wanted to find a blacktail rattlesnake. They are such beautiful snakes and I just wanted to see one. I even took a trip to the Gila wilderness where I was pretty much guaranteed a blacktail by Bill. I have looked in several areas and always came up short. Last Tuesday, Bill called me and told me he was giving me some gps coordinates. I said okay and he told me of a blacktail that was hanging out at those coordinates! It was like geocaching! It was great! That afternoon I made the climb to the rock where this snake hung out. About half way up, I saw a nice Chihuahuan Spotted Whiptail and thought I would take a picture of it and discovered just about the worst possible thing: the battery on my camera was dead. I couldn't believe it. Luckily I did have my cel phone and it does have a camera. I continued up the trail and saw some dirt that didn't look right and looked closer and discovered a cute little gopher snake:




Sorry for the crappy pic, cel phone pics are awful.


I got closer and the hike got more strenuous. The gps said I was there. I looked around for the area Bill had described and there it was. It was hiding under the rock in some grass and my cel phone was way below par. This was the best pic I could get:




You can barely pick out some of the pattern. Of course I had to get back to get better pictures. This was possible as the snake was opaque and Bill had found it at the same spot last year in the same condition and it stuck around until it shed last year.


Nikki and I went on Thursday and we found a collared lizard on the way up:




We fought through the bugs and the heat and made it to the rock. No snake. It was such a downer. I couldn't believe it. I was just about to give up because the bugs were flying into any opening they could find, when I decided to look into the crevice from ground level. I looked in and saw this:




There it was! Nikki was excited as was I. We had found it! We have now found all rattlesnakes in our home county! It was such an amazing feeling and then we returned down the mountain and were very satisfied!


Josh

Introduction and a few recent finds

Well, my name is Josh Emms and I am an avid field herper. This means I go out and look for herpetofauna or as many people know them: reptiles and amphibians. Friday night Nikki and I went road cruising down to Socorro and had a very productive night. The only downside was that most were DOR (Dead on Road). We saw 10 snakes and 1 lizard. I will only show pictures of the live snakes. The only time I show pictures of dead snakes is if it is a significant find. Here are the live snakes we found:

Checkered Garter Snake



Prairie Rattlesnake



We stopped at a rest area for a bathroom break and saw this sign:





Western Diamondback Rattlesnake

Totals for the night:

1 Great Plains Skink

2 Sonoran Gopher Snakes

3 Western Diamondback Rattlesnakes

1 Checkered Garter Snake

2 Prairie Rattlesnakes

1 Desert Massassauga

1 unidentified snake

On Saturday we checked traps again at the Sandia Reservation. There were a lot of people so we split up the work and Nikki and I went to group B. We found some lizards. Here they are:



New Mexico Whiptails



Collared Lizard



Short Horned Lizard











Collared Lizard in trap





Showing who's boss!

We finished and were getting in the car when we saw Dave, August and Nancy drive up. They showed us their find of the day: (these are all Dave's pictures)









Ok, then we went to do a survey in the bosque. we didn't see too much, but I was able to add an indigo bunting to my bird list! Here are some of the things we saw:



Canadian Geese with goslings

Then we got stuck and took about a half hour digging and finally got out.






Then we began the survey and saw these:



Fence Lizard



Another

I didn't get any more good pictures of anything, but we saw some New Mexico Whiptails, some squirrels, some Western Tanagers. and a turkey.

When we got home we found some birds at our pond:



Mourning Doves and a hummingbird (not pictured) were hanging out and immediately scared off by the dogs.

Last night we went road cruising with August and Nancy and found one DOR (dead on road) Sonoran Gopher Snake. On the way back to our house we found a DOR Longnose Snake. Well, that's it for now!