What it all boiled down to was the fact that I needed a photo of a Tucson shovel-nosed snake, Chionactis occipitalis klauberi. But boiled down even further was the fact that aftter failing on several lengthy trips to find one it was time to seek expert help. So I dialed up Arizona herp Guru, Randy Babb. And Lady Luck was with me, Randy agreed to take me afield in search of my elusive and increasingly enigmatic goal.

For reasons not yet fully determined this, the Tucson shovel-nosed snake, the southeasternmost subspecies of the genus, had become difficult to find over the years. Since comparatively few people have much interest in the small burrowing snakes, few people seemed aware of the population reductions. And of those that were aware, no one could venture a reason, But where you could once find two or three examples on a good night, you were now lucky to be able to see one a year and often saw none. Randy hadn’t returned to his study site, hundreds of acres in a wildlife management area and the paved road that bisected this expanse, in several years, but the weather seemed perfect so we began our search. Randy. Andy Holycross and Charlie Painter came by Randy’s to visit and photograph herps, and got recruited into the search. Since Andy happened to be looking at the genetics of the genus, recruitment wasn’t too difficult.

We elected to only roadhunt, and drove for hours on each of three nights. For our efforts the combined number of shovel-noses found was 2 thoroughly crushed DORs and 1 that had seemingly been hit but that was still alive and was very photographable. It wasn’t what I had hoped for, but it at least filled a photograph gap. Interestingly, we saw no variable sand snakes, Chilomeniscus stramineus (those north of the border are not too variable, being off-white below, pinkish-orange above, and having a regular series of prominent black dorsal saddles), while roadhunting Randy’s site. Randy was a little perplexed by this lack, for sand snakes, once as common as the shovel-noses, now seemed equally uncommon. Whether it is just our sampling technique (we might have been a month to late for the peak movement of these snakes) or whether there is an actual downturn in the populations of these two snakes remains to be seen.