This is a large and typically colored Yonahlossee salamander
A couple of months ago Patti and I were “leaf-peeping” in western NC. We had visited Grandfather Mountain, driven along US221, and accessed the Blue Ridge Parkway, and were now sitting at Yonahlossee Overlook. This of course brought back many memories. Yonahlossee— the word is said to be of Cherokee origin and to mean “the trail of the bear.” Yonahlossee Trail— once a stage coach road between Linville and Blowing Rock, NC, had also allowed access to logging crews. Trees were cut, trees regrew, and the countryside was now a gently sloping forest of greenery growing between immense boulders and outcroppings on one side of the road and a precipitous forested drop on the other.

But my memories centered more on rainy nights of about 25 years ago when, then living in Asheville, the region was but a short drive that allowed me easy access to one of the world’s most beautiful caudatans, the Yonahalossee salamander, Plethodon yonahlossee. The largest of the genus, the adult length of 8 1/2 inches rendered the big red-backed salamanders easily visible as they left the safety of the verdant, rocky, woodlands to cross the twisty-turny roadway during summer rains. Fortunately for both salamanders and me, the road was not heavily traveled at night. I actually saw very few of the caudatans fall victim to traffic and I was always ready to avoid approaching vehicles.

Fond memories—the stuff of blogs!

The Delta map turtle is one of the "sawbacked" types.
At the time I decided I wished to photograph the Delta map turtle in the wild, it was considered a named subspecies, Graptemys nigrinoda delticola, the darker and easternmore of the 2 forms of the. black-knobbed map turtle. Even back then, the subspecific differences, hence validity, had been questioned. And with the 2 races interbreeding widely and seeminly at every given opportunity, the differentiating features between the western and the eastern races were fast melding. It was becoming ever more difficult to separate them by appearance alone. But it still seemed that the map turtles at the eastern most periphery of the species range north of Mobile Bay were darker overall, often had linear postorbital markings, and had larger dark plastral figures than examples from further west. So, when, a couple of springs ago, I still wanted to see this turtle, Curtis suggested a “can’t miss” locale and Kenny and I, in the region for other reasons, headed northward from Mobile Bay.

Within 10 miles the sky darkened, the sun was obscured, immense cumulus clouds gathered and we drove into storms so intense that traffic was almost at a standstill. Still we crawled northward, eventually left the rain (but not the clouds) behind. An hour and a half later, in late afternoon, when we arrived at the map turtle destination it was still so dark that the cameras had problems focusing on the few Delta maps that were still hoping for sunlight on exposed snags. Although we decided to remain overnight and try our luck the next morning, cloudy conditions continued to prevail. The few pix we managed to take were suitable for vouchers but marginal (as you can see here) for more definitive purposes. Next time though—next time!

The entire head of some red-cheeked mud turtles is suffused with red.
Whether you consider the red-cheek a full species (Kinosternon cruentatum) or a subspecies of the scorpion mud turtle (K. scorpioides cruentatum), there can be little argument that some examples are one of, if not the, prettiest of the genus.

Long (and with good reason) a hobbyist favorite, the amount of red on the face of this 4 to 6 inch long aquatic turtle, can vary from little more than a facial smudge (and even this may dull with advancing age) to a long-lasting brilliant suffusion encompassing the entire head.

This small and easily kept turtle is native to the Yucatan Peninsula region (southeastern Mexico and Belize). Wild collected adult examples are still occasionally available and a fair number of hatchlings are produced in captivity.

Although these (and other kinosternids) can be kept in aquaria with shallow clean water, and although they seldom bask even when it is easy for them to do so, I do offer a shelf (or smooth flat rock, where they can rest an inch or two below the water’s surface. The turtles usually thrive on a diet of high quality pelleted food but will appreciate a periodic offering of a nightcrawler or a freshly killed minnow. Hardy and easily kept, be prepared to have your red-cheeks for decades.

Although not common, red phase brown anoles are well documented in Florida populations.
This pretty little female brown anole visited our back deck yesterday. She caught the eye of an amorous male brown anole of normal color. As far as aberrancies go, orange headed female and all orange male brown anoles are not particularly rare. And each time I see one I am reminded of the first one I ever saw. An adult male, it was in a terrarium at a reptile dealership and had just been sold to a well-known herpetoculturist for the whopping sum of several hundred dollars. Since then I have seen a dozen or so males and about 3 times that many orange-headed females in the wild. But I was recently told that a vendor at an east coast herp expo had a number of orange phase brown anoles that he was offering at exorbitant prices.

Build it and they will come. Offer it and they will buy. And then there was P.T.Barnum’s supposed statement, but I won’t go there!

A common liana snake en situ, Peruvian Amazon.
We had looked for years with no success for a common liana snake, Siphlophis cervinus, on the Amazonian (Peru) preserves that Patti and I regularly visited. We looked high and low, in trailside trees, in shrubs, and of course on lianas but to no avail. After all, this was known to be an arboreal, nocturnal, species so we scoured and rescoured leafed branches, bare branches. bromeliad cups, you name it. If it saw above ground level and reachable by us, we looked. So where did we find our first liana snake? It was crawling busily along atop fallen wet leaves in mid-trail a fair distance from any arboreal highways on Madre Selva Biological Preserve. About 20” long the slender snake was even prettier than it pix had led us to believe. Its busy pattern, a mosaic of yellow shades on black, orange highlights on black, and black reticulations on and orange vertebral line, was nothing short of spectacular.

But this first found terrestrial example has proven to be the exception. Although we still don’t consider this species common, since the first find we have averaged one Liana snake per trip. On one trip we were lucky enough to find 2.

But when compared to the dozens of calico snakes and rainbow boas we have happened across, the common liana snake has still proven far from a common find.

A black female Kaznakov's viper.
One female is orange with black markings, one is almost all black, and the male is mostly orange. I can let you have them for, awwww—I’ve forgotten how much—but the amount was almost affordable so I became the owner of a viper taxon that I had long wanted to work with. These were Kaznakov’s vipers, Vipera kaznakovi.

This is a small (15 to 24 inch long), rather heavy bodied viper (females tend to be stouter than males and gravid females become noticeably heavy) of forested slopes of the Caucasus region, specifically of Georgia, Turkey, and a small area of Russia.

My 3 were housed in a naturalistic terrarium having a substrate of scree, 3 snake-sized caves, and a few live plantings. Of course a small dish of clean water was always present.

The little snakes quickly settled in and within days were accepting large prefrozen fuzzies from forceps. As spring turned to summer and summer to autumn, the vipers began breeding. They were cooled for about 60 days, and when warmed they again resumed breeding. Even during breeding the appetites of all 3 were always good. By late spring the female was noticeably gravid and by midsummer she presented us with 5 beautiful babies.

Sadly many of my records and notes became irretrievable when a recalcitrant computer chose to die so many particulars are now merely memories. But at least I can share a few pix with you. Enjoy.

A portrait of the Trans-Danubian Sand Viper
Like the herpetofauna of the USA, the nomenclature of the Old World herpetofauna is in great disarray. However, it seems that at the moment, at least, the beautiful Trans-Danubian sand viper (all of the several subspecies are often referred to as “nose-horned vipers” by American herpetoculturists) continues to be known as Vipera ammodytes montandoni. The Trans-Danubian sand viper is adult at from 24 to 34 inches in total length and is restricted in distribution to Bulgaria and southern Romania. Often differentiated by the shape of the rostral projection which is deeper than broad this sturdy viper is sexually dichromatic. Females are usually of some shade of fawn with a deep brown dorsal pattern while the ground color of the males is from a rather light gray to a dark olive gray and the dorsal markings are black(ish). And the keyt word here is “usually,” for some individuals in populations may be quite brightly colored.

This snake can vary as greatly in disposition as in coloration with some being placid and reluctant to strike while others will strike with very little provocation. The venom is complex and the toxicity has been found to vary populationally. This snake should be considered dangerous and if handling is necessary this should be accomplished with extreme care and a clear plastic restraining tube.

This is a normally colored and patterned dusky pygmy rattler.
Dusky pygmy rattlers, Sistrurus miliarius barbouri, are among the most abundant snakes, including both nonvenomous and venomous—in Florida. I can remember finding these in such numbers beneath the Australian pines that lined the old Tamiami Canal west of Dade County that it was far easier to ignore them than to count them. They were nearly as plentiful in Broward, Lee, Collier, Charlotte, and Brevard counties. And they remain one of the snakes that we can be almost assured of seeing when weather conditions are reasonable in Union, Baker, and Liberty counties. Simply stated, although they can be absent from some locales dusky pygmy rattlesnakes are almost everywhere in Florida.

In keeping with the common name dusky pygs are usually just that, dusky in color and “dusty” in appearance. The dusty appearance is created by a varying overlay of melanin that may obscure the precise outlines of the dark dorsal and lateral spots. This nervous (even twitchy) little rattlesnake usually has a prominent but broken orange vertebral stripe between the dark blotches and often brightest anteriorly. Some examples, these often termed “anerythristic” by hobbyists, may lack the orange. Rarely—very rarely—the pattern of the dusky pyg may be lineate rather than blotched. On these examples the lateral blotches are usually entirely lacking and the orange vertebral stripe may be unbroken, bisecting both the gray ground color and the dark dorsal blotches. And now to the photos of this interesting little crotaline, click below…

It took a few tries but Lady Luck was finally with us: Brazos water snake.
It has been many years now since Kenny and I decided to look for, and actually did find, the two Texas water snakes that were then considered subspecies of the Harter’s water snake. These, then, were the Brazos water snake, N. harteri harteri, and the Concho water snake, N. harteri paucimaculata. Although of questionable validity studies have since elevated the 2 one time subspecies to full species.

At the time we sought these snakes we both lived in Florida so the initial distance between home and Palo Pinto County, TX was, shall we say, significant. Kenny is great at ferreting out valid locales for the taxa that we hope to photograph, but on the first attempt the water snakes did not cooperate. We searched upstream and downstream from a number of the riffles where they had formerly been seen. No water snakes—not even the rather common diamond-backed water snakes. We did find dozens of taxa to photograph on that trip but the target species was not among them.

But some months later, on the second trip, Kenny’s diligence paid off. On that occasion one of the rock-edged riffles disclosed its serpentine treasure and photos of the Brazos water snake were added to our library.

Next try would be for the Concho water snake.

More photos under the jump.

Vertically elliptical during the daylight hours, the pupils of the Great Basin spadefoot are almost round on dark nights.
It has always amazed me how some relatively common—or even abundant—species can evade all efforts to find them. Or at least they evade almost all efforts. I encountered such difficulty when I was trying to photo the Great Basin spadefoot, Spea intermontana. Of course the fact that I lived in Florida, a couple of thousand miles east of the range of this taxon added significantly to the difficulty I had in encountering it.

Without going into a lot of the painful details, I’ll just say that on my first 3 attempts (about 13,000 miles of travel), I failed. Then on another trip, after Gary and I returned to the mainland from the Channel Islands (CA), I decided I REALLY wanted to succeed in finding this anuran. Gary knew a couple of locals only a couple of hundred miles away, so we got in the car, drove to the areas—and failed--again! Then Gary mentioned that he knew of a place in Washington, very near the Canadian border, where these critters would be calling—guaranteed. Lets see now. We were south of Los Angeles and the toads were east of Seattle—that was only about 1500 miles. So off we went. The good part for Gary was that he lived in Seattle. The bad part for me was that from Seattle I would have to drive another 3,000 miles diagonally across the USA. Awwww, what the heck. It was only gasoline, time---and as Patti later reminded me, money.

But as it turned out the spadefoots were out and calling in a vast sandy area that was still holding many pools of rainwater. And I finally—after 14,500 miles of trying—actually photographed them. But now I can’t remember why it was so very important to me(LOL).

This Peruvian example, an adult Phrynonax polylepis, has assumed a defensive posture.
Phrynonax polylepis? What in the world is that?

Actually it is a snake that you might know well. Think the Peruvian and Brazilian lineage of Pseustes poecilonotus, the common bird snake, aka the common puffing snake. As mentioned in an earlier blog this month, there has been a “shake up”—a reclassification of the genus once called Pseustes. The big yellow-bellied bird snake, once Pseustes sulphureus, is now Spilotes sulphureus. With this change the remaining 2 (now elevated to 3) taxa are in the genus Phrynonax. P. poecilonotus, once ranging from Central America to South America, has now been restricted to Central America. P. shropshirei, a yellow flecked black species, ranges from Panama to Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela and the species P. polylepis has been resurrected for the southernmost of the 2 South American forms. Based on current knowledge it is likely that at least 2 additional species will be erected.

This is the Mexican form of Spilotes pullatus, S. p. mexicana.
Spilotes, long a monotypic genus of beautiful black and yellow, neotropical, arboreal, snake, has recently become bitypic—and polymorphic. This was accomplished when a group of herpetologists (see paper mentioned below) undertook the reevaluation of the genus Pseustes, the bird snakes.

The result of their studies are that 3 species previously in the genus Pseustes are now in the resurrected genus Phrynonax and the 3 meter long, olive and brownish Pseustes sulphureus has become Spilotes sulphureus.

In a facebook quote Cesar Barrio Amoros (a member of the research team) stated “in this article we change the use of Psustes (sic) (no longer a valid genus) per Phrynonax for poecilonotus, shoepshirei and polylepis and sulphureus become Spilotes.”

In explanation of the above, with the removal of Pseustes sulphureus, the type species of the genus, Psuestes becomes an invalid generic name and has necessitated the elevation of the senior synonym, in this case Phrynonax as the valid name for the remaining 3 taxa.

So those among you who used to have Pseustes sulphureus now have Spilotes sulphureus and those that have any of the other three Pseustes species now have Phrynonax sp. But fret not. As long as they are properly cared for the snakes couldn’t care less.

And for further information please reference: Jadin, R., Burbrink, F., Rivas, G. Vitt, L., Barrio-Amorós, C.L. & Guralnick, R. 2013. Finding arboreal snakes in an evolutionary tree: phylogenetic placement and systematic revision of the Neotropical birdsnakes. J. Zoolog Syst Evol Res doi: 10.1111/jzs.12055: 1-8.

Tank, sphagnum, light, and sturdy plants provide an easily built and maintained amphibian terrarium.
All that is needed to make a very pretty terrarium for horned and other bulky frogs with limited leaping ability is the tank (ours is a 40 gallon), a complete cover (with horned frogs a cover may not be needed) but if arboreal species are housed within not only is a cover needed but a suitable perch should also be provided, a suitable light, enough good quality unmilled sphagnum moss to provide a 3” deep bottom cover, a few hardy plants (I prefer philodendrons, “pothos” or similar nearly indestructible species, and, of course, the frog inhabitant. Since the sphagnum will be kept damp and clean, unless you are intending to breed the species a water container is optional. If a water container is provided be sure the water is kept clean. Ditto with the sphagnum bottom cover. To prevent the sphagnum from being ingested by a hungry frog, food items may be proffered on forceps or from the fingers (the latter sometimes and with some species not being an especially good idea!). With an escape proof top this setup also works well for salamanders.

From this point on pictures will probably be the most descriptive. I hope you enjoy your frogs as much as I do mine.

Beautiful in any setting, this Inyo Mountains slender salamander seemed especially so against the desert background.
“Next right” Gary said. “It’s just a mile or two up the road.”

”OK. Whoops you mean here?”

“Yes. I guess we’ll have to roll the boulders.”

So we huffed, puffed, strained, and somehow moved the huge rocks just enough to allow the car to sneak carefully through.

Ahead of us was a rocky trail that seemed to go a few hundred feet into the desert, up a rise, and then peter out entirely.

With Gary directing we got to the end of the trail. Then carefully avoiding rocks we managed to go a few hundred feet farther.

“We walk from here.”

And walk we did. Over the rise, then down to an orchid laden desert spring, along a marsh, and following the run, to a desert wonderland, a willow surrounded waterhole thickly edged with flat fist-sized rocks.

“Go to it” Gary said, “but be sure to replace the rocks as close to the original position as possible.”
So I did and I did, and within minutes I had uncovered, photographed, and returned to its hiding place one of the most beautiful salamanders I have yet seen, a light phase Batrachoseps campi, Inyo Mountain salamander. These deserts are just alive with amphibian surprises. Thanks again, Gary.

The red pygmy rattlers of Hyde County, NC are among the world's most beautiful snakes.
It was exactly 5:45PM and the temperature was 84F when we turned from the pavement onto a secluded dirt road in Hyde County, NC. It was a sunny mid-August afternoon and the humidity was high. Moments earlier we had photographed a 4-foot long canebrake rattler lying quietly in the then traffic free oncoming lane, but it was not for canebrakes that Jake and I had made the drive. Rather, it was the hope of seeing a red phase Carolina pygmy rattlesnake, Sistrurus m. miliarius, that had drawn us northward those several hundred miles. We had allowed 2 nights for the search.

Within 15 minutes of finding the canebrake we were back in the car. Decision time was upon us. Should we remain on the sun-warmed paved road or turn onto the cooler, shaded intersecting dirt road that stretched off far into the distance. The dirt road won out and it proved to be a good decision. Within five seconds of having made the turn we found the target, a beautiful adult red phase pygmy. It lay fully stretched just inches from an acre of tall grasses. Indeed the deities of herping were smiling on us! We had found our main target on the first evening and could now concentrate on our newly stated target 2 the next night. From this, the Sandhills phase of the Carolina pygmy, we were separated by several hundred miles. But at least the destination was closer to home. Have I ever mentioned how big the Carolinas seem when driving east to west?

We occasionally see adult Florida rough green snakes in the cat briars along the fencelines.
I was creeping along on the riding mower a few afternoons ago when just ahead of the right front tire I notices a lengthy piece of grass make a shivery-sinuous movement. Hmmmmm. Either the grass was reacting in a frightened manner at the thought of being decapitated by the whirling blades or there was something there that needed scrutinizing. Choosing the latter of these 2 options I slammed on the brakes, crawled from the seat, moved a step ahead of the idling machine, stooped down and saw----nothing! I stood, was just about to hop back on the mower when I happened to see a little pink tongue flickering. Once the tongue was seen the rest of the creature, all 7 inches of it (a hatching Florida rough green snake, Opheodrys aestivus carinatus wonderfully camouflaged by the grass blades) was easily seen. I was sure glad I had stopped.

Over the years I had seen several adult rough green snakes amidst tangles of cat briar, blackberry canes, and Virginia creeper along the fence line, but this was the first hatchling I had seen in the yard. I sure hope it will not be the last.

Click below for more pictures

Note the difference in blotch size of these 2 Sandhill pygmys.
Back and forth. Back and forth. North 10 miles. South 10 miles. Than over again—and again. Occasionally we changed our route to an intersecting sand road for a few miles. We had only one night left on this trip and we were on a quest in unknown (for Jake and me) territory. The targets here were the sandhill phases of the Carolina pygmy rattlesnake, Sistrurus m. miliarius.

Although it hadn’t looked all that far on the map, I’m here to tell you it was a long drive from Hyde County NC to the sandhill region of northcentral SC! Once Jake and I had succeeded in finding and photographing a red phase pygmy in Hyde County, we had decided that in the remaining time we needed at least one more feasible target. Thus began the quest for sandhill pygs that found us now in the land of sand pines, cacti, thornscrub, fox squirrels, beautiful little pothole ponds (which, we were told were replete with broken-striped newts (of which we found exactly none!)—and the sandy countryside (again we were told) was acrawl with pygmy rattlers.

The afternoon waned, sunset neared, passed, and darkness enveloped us. Bats wheeled and darted in front and overhead and still we drove. We turned onto a paved side road, drove up a few miles and reversed direction. I looked at what seemed to me a black marked white stick at the road edge. Jake did a double take and hollered “STOP. Back up. That was a snake!”
And sure enough it was a little dark blotched silvery white pygmy, the first of 4 seen that night. Photos were taken and we headed southward. It had been a great trip. Thanks, Jake.

This is an adult pair of Egyptian tortoises.
It was about 35 years ago when Chris invited me to check out a few tiny tortoises that he had just received. They were, he said, Egyptian tortoises, Testudo kleinmanni. I had to do some scrambling to familiarize myself with this taxon but I was able to learn that at an adult size of only 3.5 to 5" this was the smallest of the genus and that even in those days was considered a rarity. It had apparently once ranged from Libya to Israel but was thought to have been extirpated over much of its range.

Sadly, Florida proved an unsuitable home for these new arrived but aridland adapted arrivals. Although most survived here few actually thrived. In contrast, many of them that went to homes in the drier and less humid desert and prairie states seemed to do well and once the chelonians had been acclimated a number of hobbyists succeeded in breeding them one or more times.

But even today the availability of these little charmers is spotty at best. And although I have never maintained this taxon I have been told that the hatchlings produced from well acclimated captive adults are much hardier than those imports of long ago. I sure hope that this is the case and that future years will see this tortoise readily available to herpetoculturists.
More photos under the jump

Meet an upset Mohave rattler.
Again came the now familiar cry -- "snake!" But this time it was I who noticed the hefty serpent at road edge. Either a western diamondback or a Mohave rattler-- and it proved to be a 3 1/2 foot long example of the latter.

Jake had been getting a few minutes of shuteye before we reached our chosen hunting area. We expected it to be a long night as we searched out the anurans. The torrential rains that had fallen for the last 2 hours has stopped but the desert was soaked, dry creeks were raging and playas were filled. My yell jerked Jake instantly awake and by the time I had stopped the car he was piling out.

Mohave rattlesnakes (yes, it's now spelled with an "h" and not a "j"), Crotalus s. scutulatus, have reputations for having bad tempers and this one was certainly living up to that reputation. The hefty snake had begun striking the moment Jake had stepped from the car. Not only did the snake strike so hard that it slid forward each time on the wet and slippery road, but the striking was incessant, causing Jake to take couple of involuntary steps backward from the pavement. Of course this brought him (equally involuntarily) into an unexpected rear attack by formidably armed "monkey-get-back-bushes" (mesquite, cats claw, and beaver-tail cacti). Then and there Jake performed an impromptu rendition of that horrid old dance the we old timers refer to as the "green-apple-quickstep." Jake proved far more agile than I had credited him to be!

But eventually Jake's perseverance prevailed, photos of the Mohave were taken and we were on our way again.

More photos under the jump

Hatchling and juvenile Baird's rat snakes have prominent saddles
"Snake!"

Jake had grimmaced as I stopped again to photograph the ever-changing and increasingly beautiful West Texas sunset. Within minutes I was back on the road and traffic was still quite light. We dipped and had started up a gentle incline when a female striped skunk with 5 trailing kits started across the road. As I slowed the female bolted leaving 5 very confused skunklets milling around. I stopped and moved the kits from the pavement into the roadside grass. Whoops. Guess I got sprayed. Jake was really grimmacing now--and holding his throat and hanging out the window. This had all the makings of a great night.

I was back up to cruising speed now and still extolling the beauty of the sunset and the skunks when Jake hollered "snake." It was a good thing that one of us was watching the road. I stopped, backed up and there sure was a snake--and it was a silver-blue beauty--3 feet of Baird's rat snake, Pantherophis bairdi. This beautiful constrictor may attain an adult length of 5 feet, is the westernmost representative of the Pantherophis obsoletus complex, and is certainly one of the prettiest.

This is a pretty but pale Big Bend western diamond-back.
Where were the western diamond-backed rattlesnakes, Crotalus atrox? Jake and I began asking ourselves that question on our first night in Val Verde County, TX, and continued wondering throughout our 10 nights in West Texas. We were no closer to an answer on that 10th night than we had been on the first. We knew only that 14 months earlier (August 2014) we had seen more western diamond-backed rattlers than any other snake species. And that over the years I had found this to often be the case. We found diamond-backs from the time of night that the desert had cooled enough to allow snake movement until the wee hours of the morning when, if we looked eastward, we could see the first evidence of a new dawn. We found them crossing the roadway. We found them quietly coiled, as if basking, on the pavement. We even found them stretched fully out as they swallowed prey, often a kangaroo rat. In other words, there was no shortage of Crotalus atrox. It was other rattlers, black-tails, rock, and Mohave that we had been difficult to see.

But now, a year later, our findings were very different. It was mid-June and we were seeing very few of these big, usually feisty, rattlers. In fact during the 10 days we were in the range of the taxon we saw only 4 C. atrox . 3 were prowling and 1 was coiled in ambush position in a small cave in a low rock cut.

I do have to mention though that where we had seen western diamond-backs a year earlier, we were now encountering rock rattlers in fair numbers, many black-tails. and a few Mohaves. Although the reasons for this species shift remain unclear we actually found the tradeoff quite satisfactory. And I'm already wondering what next year's trip will bring?

More photos under the jump

Our trip had been replete with rattlesnakes. The roadways and rockcuts in the Big Bend area had offered up a western diamond-back or two, a few Mohave rattlers, many black-tailed rattlers and a sufficient number of mottled rock rattlers to keep things really interesting. We had found rock rattlers having pearl gray ground colors on some cuts, those having a bluish-gray ground color on other cuts. and Kenny had found and shown us one from a more westerly cut that resembled a banded rock rattler as much, or perhaps even more, than it did the mottled subspecies.

But the ones that most caught my attention had an olive-fawn ground color with faint pinkish overtones and warm brown irregular barring. In color they looked far more like the rock rattlers from the rather distant Davis Mountains than the populations nearest to the snakes at hand. And their colors camouflaged them more effectively than those of any of the other populations we visited.

Judge for yourselves how inconspicuous the warm overtones rendered these rattlers when they were lying quietly amidst the rocks and soils of their natural habitat.

For us the question quickly became how many had we overlooked rather than how many we actually saw.

More photos under the jump

While we sat in Study Butte eating the evening meal, the sky darkened. For the last hour or so lightning had been flashing east of us and we had heard a very occasional rumble of thunder. Suddenly the wind picked up and the outside was obliterated by a dust storm. Driven by the lusty gusts a self-opening tent scooted by. It was followed closely by a young lady attempting to recorral the errant canvas. Then quiet. The wind dropped, the tent was caught by the chaser, and a bolt of cloud to ground lightning followed immediately by a deafening clap of thunder--the desert storm was upon and around us. And as every herper knows, a desert storm of any significance (and even many of lesser impact) means amphibians. Amphibians emerge from nooks, crannies, and burrows to set up very temporary housekeeping in the newly formed, very ephemeral, desert pools.

While monitoring nearby rainfalls on his iPhone, Jake determined that the strongest storms had been about 50 miles away. So off we went, reaching the area a few minutes before sunset. It took just a few minutes to learn that almost every swale was in flash-flood stage and only a few more minutes to determine that huge pools now sat atop desert flats that had until only a few hours earlier been long parched. We knew then that our choice had been a good one.

By nightfall a few tentative anuran vocalizations were heard. Among the first to call were the Couch's spadefoots, Scaphiopus couchii. Shortly thereafter red-spotted toad, Bufo punctatus, had joined the spadefoots in chorus. By full darkness the voices of western green toads, Bufo debilis insidior, and Texas toads, B. speciosus, had been added and the roadway was fairly seething with all 4 anuran species.

It was a night that we would long remember.

More photos under the jump

Another year of lyre snake failure for me!
So, what else is new?

After 50 years of unsuccessfully looking for this little opisthoglyph in Texas' Big Bend region if I had found one I would probably have keeled over from shock. Other searchers though -- mostly the participants of the "Sanderson Snake Days" event, were successful in finding a Chihuahuan lyre snake, Trimorphodon vilkinsonii, and at least one person found 2! In other words these little snakes were found on all sides of Jake and me, but we were never in quite the right position at the right time. For example:

Jake and I had slowly and repeatedly driven an area at which dozens of lyres had been found over the years. Then tiring of that routine we added an extra few miles to one cruise. When we returned, about 20 minutes later, we learned that not one but two of the snakes had been found in the 20 minutes we were gone. A day or two later, on that same trip we were again cruising and hoping. A friend from California was also cruising the road, he in search of gray-banded kingsnakes. He found no kings but watched a Chihuahuan lyre snake cross the road and disappear into the rocky abyss on the south side. We were about 10 minutes behind him and we found neither king nor lyre. You get the idea. We were totally ineffectual.

Well, at least Sky (who had a research permit for the taxon) let me photograph her find, and next year (2016), all things being equal, I'll give it another try. What the heck--even an old herper needs a goal.

More photos under the jump. >

Hatchling Reeve's turtles Chinemys reevesi usually have a yellow facial pattern
When I was a kid there used to be 5 and 10 cent stores--real ones where you could but things for 5 or 10 cents or more. Some of the stores were small, some were huge, and all were places of wonderment to a youngster. And among the wonders offered were the little "Japanese coin turtles" in the pet departments. These little dark-colored turtles would show up only periodically, usually after the supplies of "green turtles" (red eared sliders) and "gray turtles" (Mississippi map turtles) had been exhausted. I'm not sure how long it was before , or even how, I learned that the proper name for the coin turtle was Reeve's turtle, or that its scientific name was then Chinemys reevesi (today it is known as the Chinese pond turtle or the Chinese three-keeled pond turtle and has been reclassified as Mauremys reevesi) but learn it I did. But I do know that it didn't take me long to learn that these little 49c turtles seemed even easier to keep than the American species that they seasonally replaced.

I hadn't thought of a Reeve's turtle for several decades but for reasons unknown I began thinking of them a few weeks ago. It took a while to find a breeder of this species but thanks to the aquatic turtle classifieds on Kingsnake.com I succeeded and, yes, they had a few hatchlings (but sadly they were more than 49c each). But with that said, guess what the FedEx driver delivered to me this morning.

Now all I need is a tiny plastic turtle tank bedecked with a proportionately tiny plastic palm tree. Reliving childhood-- but just kidding about that old-timey turtle tank!

More pictures under the jump!

Hatchling Texas banded gecko Coleonyx brevisWhat a difference a little rain makes. Last year (2014) when Jake and I made a 12 day jaunt to Texas' Big Bend region in late August dryness had prevailed. We did well with herp-diversity but one normally often seen taxon, the little Texas banded gecko, Coleonyx brevis, had proven difficult to find. In fact, we saw only 4, 2 adults and 2 hatchlings, on the entire trip.

But on the June 2015 trip, on each of the several days allocated for nighttime road-cruising, we saw from 2 to 10 of the little geckos, more on the damp nights than on dry ones. It seemed that the sightings were back to normal in frequency.

The Texas banded gecko is actually a common little nocturnal lizard. When moving they tend to stand rather high on their legs and to wag their tail. They could conceivably be mistaken for a scorpion or a mouse when in the glow of headlights the lizards are seen darting across a desert roadway. Juveniles of both sexes and adult females tend to be the more prominently banded while the bands of adult males often have irregular edges and the overall pattern may be more reticulate.

In the time span we were in Texas we saw 20 or 30 of these delightful lizards. Seeing these helped transform the trip from merely mediocre to a resounding success.

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There was that rather cloudy long ago morning in Portal, AZ when I was hoping to photo black-tailed rattlers, Crotalus molossus. I had looked and looked but had found none. Then, as I was about to give up an elegant trogon (then known as the coppery-tailed trogon) flew right over my head and alit on a nearby oak limb. I immediately decided a trogon in the viewfinder was a whole lot better than a non-existent rattlesnake. So off I went, my interest now focused on the rather uncommon bird.

Luckily I had managed to get just about near enough to take the bird's pic. There. Click. Got at least one pic. Deciding to try and get just one step closer, I stepped between two boulders, and BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!

Not good. Being wedged between two huge boulders was not an enviable position and when I looked down and saw the snake--a big angrily defensive black-tail, I realized how close I was to getting bitten. Have you ever heard of levitation. I levitated backwards over one of the boulders and somehow managed to avoid both a broken shoulder and what had seemed to be an inevitable envenomation.

But, a few minutes later (I never did get that closer trogon photo), still shaking, I did go back and photograph the snake. No sense in wasting a perfectly good photo-op!

"There' one!"

I slammed on the brakes, pulled a 180, and sped back to--to another rock. Another 180 and we were moving westward again. The last "turn" had brought the false sightings up to Five. Five times we had thought we had sighted a round-tailed horned lizard, Phrynosoma modestum, basking on the pavement and five times it had been a rock or a piece of flattened vegetation.

I had about brought the old car back up to 65 mph when Jake screamed again. This time I didn't turn, I merely stopped at roadside and told Jake "Go get it." He hopped out, ran back a couple of hundred feet, and stooped to pick up another "rock." But unless he was taunting me he usually didn't pick up rocks. Maybe--just maybe...

By the time Jake had returned to the car he was grinning from ear to ear. That last "rock" actually was the horned lizard we (and especially he) had wanted so badly to see.

We had failed to find a round-tail on the first 10 of the 12 days allocated to this 2015 trip to the Big Bend and had begun to wonder whether 2015 would replicate 2014's trip when we had not found the species. We no longer had to wonder. Success, finally!

Now to find my camera.

More photos under the jump...

It had been a very long day in West Texas, and it was past time to call it quits. Jake and I had just driven almost non-stop from our Florida homes and following an hour of shuteye had hit the road for a little r&r (herping). We had done pretty well, photographing a pretty male Baird's rat snake at road edge and an equally pretty mottled rock rattler on a roadcut before changing venues.

Now, at 3 in the morning, we had decided to call it a night and had headed back for the motel when a ring-tailed "cat" at roadside caught our attention. I slowed to watch the little mammal and was just speeding up when we saw a solfugid (sun spider) on the yellow center line. Photo time. As I stepped from the car I noticed a small snake that was lying quietly on the center line only a few feet from the solfugid. Immediately recognizable as a long-nose, Rhinocheilus lecontei, the little snake was as obviously different as it was recognizable -- it lacked even a vestige of the red pigmentation so typical of the species. It was merely black and white, anerythristic if you prefer.

What a great find at the end of a long and busy day.

More photos under the jump...

Having kept and bred Santa Cruz (Channel Island) gopher snakes, Pituophis catenifer pumila, for several years, I had become enamored with this smallest of the gopher snakes. Even though these snakes are of nervous demeanor and have an occasional tendency to huff, puff, and strike, their 28 to 34" adult size makes them an easy gopher snake to handle.

Restricted in range to two of California's Channel Islands (Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa Island) there seems to still be a paucity of information on this snake's preferred habitats. However, it is probable that like other forms of the gopher snake, the Santa Cruz subspecies is a habitat generalist that utilizes most if not all of the varied insular habitats--be they montane, pastoral or littoral.

The entire range of the Santa Cruz gopher snake is now under the protection of the National Park Service and/or The Nature Conservancy. Therefore this tiny gopher snake can be difficult to acquire.

And how tiny is "tiny"? As mentioned above the adult length seldom exceeds 30" and hatchlings are 6 to 8" in length. For a gopher, that's tiny!

More photos under the jump...