The Rio Grande zoo in Albuquerque has a new reptile curator and he has added a lot of new animals to the reptile house and they had an event dedicated to herps on Saturday November 13th. We went and had a great time!
Here is a link to the species list.

Six months ago all we had as far as venomous goes was a few of the locals and an Armenian Viper. Doug Hotie has taken this reptile collection to a world class reptile zoo.

We arrived and were greeted by the Komodo Dragon exhibit as usual and meandered over to the next area and found staff walking around:

and some of the other exhibits:

Snouted Cobra

Bushmaster

Temple Viper

Quince Monitor

Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake

We got this far and then noticed a sign for a keeper talk and it was August's friend doing the talk. Nobody showed up for it except us, so he asked if we wanted to see the back area. That was a no brainer! First we went to the quarantine room and saw these:

Crocodile Skink

Temple Viper

This little guy puffed at us!

Banded Rock Rattlesnake



Desert Tortoise

Lancehead Rattlesnake

Among many others! Then he took us around to the back end of the dragon cage:

Komodo

We then went to the back of one of the exhibit areas:

Red-footed Tortoise

They had three cages with King Cobras in them but they were all out of view :? The guy giving the tour then said, let me get one out for you. We backed up and he got one of them out:










We then went to Saltwater Croc building and were able to hold a baby alligator!



Nancy with it

Me showing off its belly

Iwalani holding - she was pretty scared!

Nikki with it

Chris likes to make faces

Jeremy holding it

And then the main attraction in the building:

Salty






And then on to the alligators:

American Alligators

On our way out we noticed this in a tree near the exit:

Miller's Chameleon




I got a video of it eating:

We ended our tour there and went on to the rest of the reptile house:

Puff Adder

Florida Cottonmouth

Black Forest Cobras

Retics

Rhinoceros Viper

Banded Water Cobra

Red Spitting Cobra

Black Mambas



Storr's Monitor

Then my battery died! That was pretty much all that was new, but what a great improvement! It was a great experience! I will leave you with a picture of a silly gorilla:


Josh

The rest of the season in NM

Wow, the time has flown by. The season is almost done and I realized I haven't posted for a while. Here is some of what I've found around.


New Mexico Whiptail

Eastern Collared Lizard

Speckled Earless Lizard

We took a trip down south to look for subocs and decided to pop into the Gila. We found no live snakes, but did find some other herps:

Red-spotted Toad

Canyon Treefrog tadpoles

Fence Lizard

Gila Spotted Whiptail

Ornate Tree Lizard

Green Toad - possibly a county record, there are none reported in Sierra County in Deghenhardt's book.

DOR herps included:
Trans-pecos Ratsnake
Western Diamondback Rattlesnake
Desert Box Turtle
Blacktail Rattlesnake
Sonoran Gopher Snake
Coachwhip
Big Bend Patchnose Snake
Plains Leopard Frog
Couch's Spadefoot

We have seen some other herps as well:

Spadefoot tadpoles


Tim came down from Colorado on his way to Arizona, so Bill, Regina, Nikki and I met up with him to do some roadcruising. The first herp of the trip was this:

Western Diamandback Rattlesnake

This would be a precursor of things to come for the night, I think we got our dirty dozen [i]atrox[/i]. Here are some other finds from the night:

American Bullfrog

WDB

This one was very calm, then:

Up he went! - This was the highest posturing I've seen!

Here he is after we moved him off the road. We were walking back to the car and heard some rattling from the other side of the road. It belonged to this beautiful creature:

Prairie Rattlesnake - love the pattern on this one! This was the most pissed off [i]viridis[/i] I have ever encountered, it left my snake hook full of venom!

Night Snake

I'll spare you the several pictures of [i]atrox[/i], we saw several!

The rest of these pictures are some critters we have found road cruising and checking traps on the reservation:

Prairie Rattlesnake

another

Painted Desert Glossy Snake

Side-blotched lizard

Chihuahuan Spotted Whiptail

Roundtail Horned Lizard

Speckled Earless Lizard

Great Plains Toad

Fence Lizard

Plains Spadefoot

Eastern Collared Lizard

Spiny Softshell Turtles

Painted Desert Glossy Snake



Longnose Snake

Sonoran Gopher Snake

Me with another

Dragonfly

Western Coachwhip



Roundtail Short-horned Lizard - my wife has an eagle eye for these!

Side-blotched Lizard - we named her "Kinky" we have caught her in the traps at least 3 times!

Regal Ringneck


We had a Saturday off so we decided to go to the Magdalenas for the afternoon to look for crotes mainly, but I also wanted to see some crevice spiny lizards again this year. Here is what we found:

Mountain Patchnose

Here it is closer

Headshot

Crevice Spiny Lizard

Well, that's about it for the year. There still is the possibility of late season den activity, but we will see what the weather does! Thanks for looking!

Josh