Friday, September 17, 2010

Evening Finds 4

9/15/2010

Let's see...13 snakes in 2 hours. That is how our night went. It started off with dove hunting as usual, though dove season just ended so no more of that for a while. As the last two shots were made by my brother before we called it quits, as the sun was going down, the snakes came out. My brother was reaching down to pick up his shell when all of a sudden he reached back and said, "Snake!" It was a baby Diamond-backed rattlesnake! (See above). Less than a foot long and maybe as thick as a dime. The snake quickly scurried back into his hole. (Unfortunately I forgot to bring my camera so we took pictures and videos with our phones but they aren't very good. So I apologize for the poor quality). I headed on over to grab my backpack from where I set it down earlier, and saw another rattlesnake coiled up by his hole. Then right near my pack I saw another rattlesnake. All the same size, probably just born this summer. Going back to meet my brother I saw the same one coiled outside his hole and then just past that my brother saw another one and then another one. Five baby rattlers in all within about 20 minutes of looking and not looking. 

We continued to look. I found and injured a small lizard and we tried to feed it to a snake but it was only interested in getting away from us and back in its hole. Then I saw a Long-nosed snake in its red splotchy phase, but it went down into a hole. I put a bone next to the bush so we could look later. Then my brother yells that he found a larger rattler (See right). So I went over and it was still a young snake but much larger than the babies. Then I noticed it might be a Mojave so we checked a few features on it and decided it was. We tried to feed the lizard to it by pushing it toward the snake with a stick but the snake just struck the stick and then we let it go on its way. We decided we'd make a loop to the water hole and back and keep looking. Shortly after heading over there, we were walking and I looked down and noticed that my brother had stepped right next to a coiled up Diamond-backed rattler about the same size as the Mojave. He didn't rattle or anything. But then we prodded him into a nearby Creosote bush. We split up and kept moving. I came across another DB rattler and then saw what looked to be a dead snake or lizard in a bush. So I got a stick and poked it and dust flew off it and it ran off. It was a huge Desert Spiny Lizard. Much larger than a quarter in diameter. 

We met up again at the water hole where we had fed the DB a week before in its den. My brother didn't find the snake but at the bottom of the den he found and retrieved two baby snake sheds. Going around the corner to where we had camped before, we saw a Sonoran Desert Toad, Woodhouse's Toad, and another coiled up DB rattlesnake. As of this time that was 9 rattlesnakes and a Long-nosed snake. On this trip we were planning on catching a Desert Banded Gecko to bring home as a pet and had seen quite a few but not as big as we had wanted. Soon after that I caught a decent sized one and we started the walk out. We soon came across another Long-nosed snake of the same coloration and a larger size (See above). I grabbed it before it made it into a hole and we took some pictures of it and then tried feeding the dead lizard we had gotten earlier to it. He grabbed it, coiled up and ate it! We let him go down a hole and then found another small gecko. The snake was coming back out so we tried feeding it again. Normally we wouldn't feed snakes geckos because they are cooler but we had seen like 15 or so in the last hour. The snake didn't seem interested so it moved to the base of another bush. As it did this another snake, a baby Gopher snake, came out of the bush (See below). The Long-nosed snake then snatched the gecko very quickly and ate it. It was such a docile snake and very pretty. We continued on. 


We got back to where the baby rattlesnakes were and grabbed our packs. Then I was showing my brother where I had seen the other Long-nosed snake and sure enough, there he was heading back to the same bush. I quickly grabbed him and we tried to feed him a small gecko we had just found as well but he wouldn't take. Instead the gecko ran into a very small hole and we left as the snake followed. Right after that we saw our last snake of the night. Another baby Gopher snake heading down a hole. Just a little bigger than the previous Gopher but still very tiny and skinny. Well that just about wraps up the evening. A crazy night of snakes all in about 2.5 hours. We will definitely be checking that place some more. We would really enjoy a Long-nosed snake as a pet but we'll see. 




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