"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.

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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!

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Patti and I sat on the screened deck this evening (06/03/15) and marveled at the agility of the many bats (probably most were Mexican free-tailed bats) and several dozen dragonflies overhead. We were in the midst of a flying ant emergence and the predatory insects and bats were taking full advantage of the seasonal repast. On convoluted flyways some 30 or 40 feet up, both had become active while the sun was still visible on the western horizon and were still wheeling and reeling when it became too dark to follow their aerial antics.

I came inside to make a few notes on the sightings and happened to glance around at the windows. Not only was it a bat and dragonfly night, it was a gecko night as well. There was at least one Mediterranean gecko, Hemidactylus turcicus, on every single window and several windows hosted 2 or 3 geckos. Every gecko was actively foraging on the ants and other small insects drawn to the lights.

The temperature was a warm 81F and the humidity 85%, apparently providing ideal conditions for our nocturnal friends. And I noted that the dragonflies, insects I had always thought of as exclusively diurnal, were still active when it had become too dark for me to follow their antics. This had been better than watching the Blue Angels and a whole lot less noisy. Some evenings just can't be improved upon.

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It was early morning (about 0715) and the temperature was just about 70 F. A least bittern -- always an avian photographic nemesis for me -- had just flown across the gravel road and landed in a patch of cattails about 30 feet ahead of me. I slowed, not that I was walking all that fast anyway, and decided to sit and wait a while on the wet and grassy bank to see if the bird would emerge in a photographable position. It did. But hoping for something even better I waited longer.

As luck would have it, while waiting I noticed a slight disturbance in a patch of floating vegetation about 15 feet from shore. My interest shifted to the floating grasses. Was something really there or was the disturbance caused by a current? I watched. Yes, there definitely was something there and it was closer to shore now. Ah ha! A snake. A dark snake with vestiges of darker bands and of a fair girth. Oh, of course. A Florida cottonmouth, Agkistrodon piscivorous conanti.

The snake neared the shore, idled quietly in the shallows for a minute or two, then slowly emerged. It angled towards a sunny spot about 6 feet from me. Once there it stopped with its head bathed in the warming rays, and then with tongue flickering coiled ever so slowly. When I shifted positions to better angle the camera the snake made a fleeting defensive gape.

Once it settled, I stood, moved quietly up the hill, and left both bird and snake in peace. This was a fine way to begin the day.

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The skies opened and the deluge began. There was no easing into it. Within minutes, the afternoon sun in which anoles and tortoises had been basking had been obliterated by leaden clouds. Thunder rumbled and lighting speared the heavens. Torrential rains were falling - 2 and a half inches in just under one hour.



By the time darkness had enveloped us, our little artificial pond on the hill was freshened, overflowing, and echoing with the rapidly pulsed and oft repeated trills of southern toads, Bufo terrestris.

But it was from across the road in the newly opened Sweetwater Wetlands Park that the true anuran cacophony had begun. Tiny marble-sized narrow-mouthed toads, Gastrophryne carolinensis, were present in some numbers, but their peenting calls were virtually overwhelmed by the vocalizations of the two larger, dominant treefrogs: the green and the barking (Hyla cinerea and H. gratiosa, respectively) that had gathered by the dozens, perhaps in the hundreds in the newly created temporary pools.

With favorable breezes the loud choruses, the "wonks" and "hollow barks", of these 2 beautiful hylids could be heard from our back deck more than a half mile away.

Need I mention that it is for these storms that we wait anxiously each year, for with each year's storm arrival we are enchanted anew by the anuran activity they induce.

"Snake!" Both Jake and I voiced the single word simultaneously.



Ahead of us, nearing the edge of the pavement, was the unmistakable form that we had been hoping to see. There were no other vehicles in sight on the roadway. As we neared, we both said "canebrake." I stopped a couple of dozen feet before reaching the snake and Jake piled out of one door and I from the other. The snake lying quietly stretched out, merely kinked a bit as we neared and never rattled.

The canebrake rattlers, Crotalus horridus atricaudatus, of this region vary noticeably in ground color with most being tan or dead-leaf brown. A few, though, are a beautiful purple or pink and we were elated to see that this 30 incher was one of these latter.

Since there was still no traffic we took a few pictures, gently touched the rattler's tail with a slender stick, and watched for a few moments as the snake slowly crawled from the pavement and disappeared without disturbance into the roadside greenery.

A canebrake had been our goal for the evening but having found this beauty we decided to continue road-hunting for another half hour. In that 30 minute time frame we saw 3 additional snakes: a corn, a juvenile yellow-gray rat snake, and a Peninsula ribbon snake.

All in all it was a great evening, one that we both would remember favorably, and we were home before dark!