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!