ReptilesAmphibians
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2010 Southeast ArizonaAboutDates: July 29 - August 8, 2010 Gallery                                               
Species ListARIZONASnakes (25 species) Colubridae Elapidae Viperidae Lizards (19 species) Anguidae Eublepharidae Helodermatidae Iguanidae Teiidae Turtles (2 species) Kinosternidae Testudinidae Frogs (7 species) Hylidae Ranidae Toads Pelobatidae NEW MEXICOSnakes (5 species) Arizona elegans - Glossy Snake Lizards (3 species) Sceloporus poinsettii - Crevice Spiny Lizard Kory's Travel LogDAY 1 Stayed up till 5am-ish prepping and packing...no unexpected surprises, just a lot of last minute issues (camera cleaning, etc). Got the truck packed and headed out on the road just at noon. Gonna be a tight squeeze with 5 guys! Ate dinner at the big texan...two guys are attempting the 72oz steak! Settled in at a days inn in los lunas nm at 12:15am. ________________________________________________________________________________ DAY 2 Woke up about 7:30am. Stopped at walmart for jeremy's special shampoo. Drove through gilla nf in nm...hwy 152. Very pretty. Stopped at an overlook and found a couple of whiptails (id later from pics), scelop (canyon lizard?), and dor black tail rattlesnake. Just drove by santa rita mine...big hole! Stopped for lunch in silver city nm. Good little authentic mex dive. A bit of rain in the huachucas and spotty all around as we drive into sierra vista. Checked in to the holiday inn express near the mall in sierra vista. Went to eat dinner at the german cafe...very good. Had to get brad and jeremy dairy queen blizzards. Almost to *****...lots of rain around. Will road cruise ***** shortly. Road cruising was pretty much a bust. Saw some toads of various kinds, dor gopher, dor desert king, dor night snake, and dor coachwhip (red). Zero aor snakes. Temps were hovering around 68-71f, windy, cooled off too much from earlier rains? Stopped by bp near *****. Met some other herpers (mike et al) at the hotel who had bagged a desert king (injured) and lyre snake. Hit the hay about 12:30am. ________________________________________________________________________________ DAY 3 Woke up just after 6am. "quickly" trying to get out the door. Had to wait till 7am for hotel breakfast. Swung by walmart (old school) for water, sodas, and ice. Btw, water from brad's green container is not drinkable...gross. Drove through ***** to *****. Cold (69-70f) and plenty of rain pretty much made the efforts a waste. Saw an unidentified whiptail (probably a sonoran...no pics) and glenn found a hook-nose snake. Van hiked b, j, and i a couple of miles to a "rock quarry" that turned out to be a pond. A few pieces of tin were laid out but no herps. Habitat didn't look super good to me. Took a hot shower (fingers were numb!) and changed into dry clothes back at the hotel. Dry felt super good! Hotel had a drier for clothes and my high powered fan was put on the boots. Whole morning has been a wash. Lots of driving too and for practically nothing. Ate lunch at a neat little "deli" dive. Very eclectic. Headed into *****...sunny now and hoping for better. Beautiful drive up to *****. Van was not comfortable...hehe. Revisited rocks from 2008 along rim of *****. Saw many yarrow's lizards (no pics). Van got a young pyro! That was it. On the drive down, found a couple new talus slides worth revisiting. After gas, dq blizzards in *****, now road cruising *****. Temp is 73ish and drier. Rains started up and temps dropped to low 60s. Frogs were out...didn't stop for them. Decided to head back to warmer, drier roads north of *****. Just turning off onto one good road and found a beautiful aor desert king. Lots of yellow. Held it for daytime pictures tomorrow. Stopped for one toad...couches. After a bit with nothing else, decided to call it a night. Got back to hotel around 11pm. ________________________________________________________________________________ DAY 4 Woke up about 6:30am. Ate hotel breakfast. Packed up the truck. Hit the talus slides of ***** and came up with 5 lepidus...2 breeding pairs. I stirred up one pair and almost at the same time glenn turned up another pair. The 5th was practically under glenn's backpack he had sat down while taking pics of the others. All beautiful snakes! The male I turned up had a hint of green like people talk about. Van flipped a tantilla wilcoxi near the truck. Tried the other higher elevation spot for pricei, but came away empty. Pretty clouded over by then so no help weather-wise. Yarrow's all over the place, of course. Stopped on the drive down for me to set up a panorama attempt. The others went back to see if they could find glenn's lost hook. Nope. Just got down from *****. Now headed around the southern end of the mountains. Montezuma's pass was awe-inspiring. Worked hard for willadi in ***** again, but came up empty. Saw a clark's spiny and greater short-horned horned lizard. We are all very sore, tired, and hungry. Van is in "discomfort". Brad is looking through "snake hunting" by kauffeld. Book shows and talks about some localities and species we have seen. Cool! About 4:50pm. Headed toward tucson and planning to road cruise that area tonight. I am sooo hungry (and not for granola bars either...real, hot food). Ate at a little chinese food joint. Didn't have the stomachs or patience in finding something better (urbanspoon ranked it with 3 star). Turned out to be pretty good (for what it was), but not great. Took a bit to get out to the road cruising area. Saw 2 dor long-nosed snakes, dor night snake, aor atrox, and several sonoran toads. We had fun photographing the toads. We also saw a cute little kit fox. Passed a g&f ranger along the way but not stopped. I fell asleep well before the road cruising was over but didn't miss much. We got too late of a start perhaps. Got back to the hotel late and i crashed pretty hard and fast. ________________________________________________________________________________ DAY 5 Wake up call was about 5am...way too early. Before heading out we bumped into a couple of other herpers and they shared a bit about their efforts. Skies were mostly overcast and temps were tame when we arrived at *****. We worked the area till about 11am and turned up a couple of black-tailed rattlesnakes, desert tortoises, and a few lizards. We swung by an area south of ***** and saw many desert iguanas... Though not too easy to photograph. We also saw zebra tails and tiger whiptails. For mammals, ground squirrels, desert hares, were seen. After some difficulties, finally found a pretty good mexican fast food joint. Headed back to the hotel for a nap and rest. Woke up around 5pm, ate a quick bite at in-and-out burgers, then headed up for another shot at sidewinders. Saw desert spiny lizards, regal horned lizards, and 2 sidewinders! With success achieved, we headed back to ***** and night hiked some washes. We saw geckos and that was about it. Now headed toward ***** for more road cruising. The ***** area produced a red-spotted toad and atrox. Moon came up and even at half-full was pretty bright. Saw the end of a massive shooting star (or military missile?) Headed back to the hotel at 1:30am. ________________________________________________________________________________ DAY 6 Woke up about 5:40. Headed to ***** and on the drive in saw many whiptails, including tigers and desert grassland, tree lizards (one found a nice perch on Brad's shoulder), and also tag-teamed to catch a leopard lizard. The leopard lizard had the tail of another lizard sticking out of its mouth when we first saw it along the edge of the road. I got a couple of quick pics with my long lens before van spooked it. After chasing it to several bushes, it finally tried to hide right under my hand... Brad slapped down on top of my hand and we pinned it. Super neat lizard and one of the bigger misses from 2008. In ***** we hiked a wash. Lots of prickly brush; should have worn long pants. Saw a few clark's spinys, more tree lizards and whiptails. Also saw a canyon tree frog. Glenn stirred up a blacktail in a little higher rocky area. Now driving quite a long way around the mountain for some higher elevation and hopefully our target AZ blacks. Went up ***** and hit a couple of spots. First stop didn't look very good to me for habitat. I did come across a dead coatimundi and saw an abert's squirrel (with the tasseled ears). The second stop looked better, especially toward the end of the hike (steep rocky canyon), but it was lower elevation and later in the day. Brad and co did catch a sonoran whipsnake and glenn saw another. Also saw a canyon whiptail and on the drive down grabbed a black-necked garter. Headed back to the hotel to pick up lights for night road cruising. Hope to grab a quick bite to eat as well. Got a bite at jack in the box. Had a chicken teriyaki bowl. Who knew they served chinese?...and not too bad either (but what wouldn't taste great after hard hiking and no lunch). Had to swing by dq for blizzards, of course. We road cruised ***** for quite a while, seeing nothing, before stopping to stretch legs. I heard frogs nearby and walked down to find several canyon treefrogs calling along a stream. Then i saw a black-necked garter with a full belly (of frogs?) and also one of the largest sonoran desert toads seen so far soaking in the water. The night really picked up when we found one of our primary targets: tiger rattlesnake. It looked much more gray than the orangish ones i had found in 2008. After a bit, we saw a big orange sausage stretched out in the middle of the road: gilla!!!!! One of the super high targets... Success! Got lots of pictures. No sooner were we coming down from the gilla high than we saw another (smaller, brighter) one meandering along beside the road! Unbelievable! We made another pass or two and then called it a night. Back at the hotel at 1am. Will try again for AZ blacks tomorrow morning. ________________________________________________________________________________ DAY 7 After waking up and a quick breakfast, we headed back up *****. We stopped at ***** and decided to hike up the main wash. Within about 30 minutes, glenn yells "i got one". We all head that way. Under the shade of a large boulder and just up from the wash is a beautiful super-black adult cerebrus! Definitely a top miss from 2008. For me, this one made the trip...everything else is gravy! The snake allowed a few pics in situ (though the lighting was tricky), then we got it out and took plenty more. I tried a new wide angle setup and hope i got some good ones with it. By hitting the target so early, we drove on up and photographed a few vistas before heading back down. With the major lowland desert targets knocked off, we decided to pack up shop and re-establish back in sierra vista. Ate lunch at a neat brewery in tucson. I picked up driving duties after that stop! Ha. The drive to sierra vista was mostly uneventful, except for an unruly tarp and a flying rock that chipped the windshield. Took a lot less time than expected to drive it. In sierra vista, our previous hotel was booked and about 2-3 other hotel stops were the same story...apparently some military exercises at the army base. So, after some difficulties we got one (but weren't able to unload our gear because of check in times). We hit ***** hard again in hopes of willardi, but not to be. We did catch another horned lizard and i saw the tail end of a whiptail or possibly garter. Just at dusk, a storm started to brew just on top of the mountain and the lightning was impressive. We tried to navigate out a different way by an old homestead, but shortly got into some rough and narrow roads. While backtracking we heard a pop and loud hisss! Flat tire! Ugh. Fix a flat was attempted, but the gash was pretty substantial. As the storms appeared to be on us at any moment, we all scrambled like a bunch of little mice--or 5 stooges?--to change the tire. Lug nuts were very tight, but "the hulk man" jeremy took care of them. With that excitement, cold rain in the areas, and sleep deprivation hitting us all, we decided to forgo the planned road cruising. On the drive back, we stayed surprisingly dry though the ground at ***** was really wet. Driving through *****, we saw a dor gopher and young aor black tailed. With the time being just after 9pm, we didn't have a lot of choices for eats, but we came by a texas steakhouse open till 10pm. The waitress was spunky and kept joking with us (especially me it seemed about ordering my steak well done, etc). I was soooo tired, i just felt about 5 steps behind every joke. Brad got a bad case of the giggles about a willy nelson caricatured picture on the wall and a joke heard earlier on the radio. I think all of us are hitting the wall really hard right now and the earlier bedtime is definitely welcomed. We hit the hay about 11:20pm. ________________________________________________________________________________ DAY 8 Woke up about 5:30am and ate breakfast. We are now driving about two hours to a supposedly good talus slide for hopes of pricei. On the drive, i've had a chance to catch up on the travel log. Now the road is very bumpy and it's hard to type. Gonna try to catch a quick nap. Drove up to some massive talus slides in the ***** where pricei are well known. Brad stirred up a nice yellow blacktail and i turned up a smaller one shortly after. I started working the edges of the slides, suspecting it to be better. The sun was hitting down pretty good on the main slides. In a few minutes, van called out "pricei"! We did get a glimpse of it, but it escaped down cracks. It was a marked animal with a spot of yellow paint on the rattle. Storms were stirring up and time seemed limited. Yarrow's lizards were scurrying all over the rocks, but particularly in one area. I slowed down...thinking where there's food, there must be snakes. Then i spotted a pricei starting to uncoil. The other guys came up and we got plenty of pics. While i was on snake watch duty, there was an "event" and jeremy looked me dead in the eyes and told me to f-off. I must have looked like a deer in the headlights. I asked what in the world I had done. He told me I was being an "a-hole as usual". I guess when you do something so careless as to grab a rattlesnake mid-body and almost get yourself bitten, it gets the adrenaline pumping and you take it out on the easiest target...that would be me. Oh well, it's gonna take more than that to ruin my trip, but a bite definitely would...so just thankful for that. I did apologize for "something", but really still don't understand the vitriol moment by hulk man...though he did get a little short with me during the tire change when i got in his way or something? It's a boys club and i'm definitely no part, but i thought things were going well enough till this. OK, just had a heart to heart with Jeremy at a vista stop. He was upset about a comment of "baby sitting" his desert king i made earlier in the week... He took it as lecturing. If things I say are going to be taken that sensitively with such deep resentment, i dunno... I guess i can't kid around like everyone else can. Boys club. Anyway j thought he was about to get another lecture and "headed it off at the pass". Say, WHAT??!!?? I guess we'll go on... I think we shook hands as merely a "gentleman's agreement" to get through the rest of the trip...didn't even come close to getting an actual apology; j seemed to come off as though he thought he were somehow justified. I expect things could be a little chilly here on out, but it's the homestretch anyway. I can just shut my yap and look for herps. (Still curious why the other guys gave j a free pass to say such horrendous things to me, but when i halfway spoke up to defend myself got hushed immediately. Protect your own, i guess.) I'm ready to go home. Stopped now for lunch at portal store cafe and lodge. Blt for a light lunch was just about right. Drive was long back to sierra vista. On the way saw a near dor blacknecked garter and dor (headless and rattleless) atrox. Also lots of pop-up rain...may dampen our road cruising (if we go). After a quick hotel stop b, j, and i are on tire duty. First tire shop says "no" on the repair; gash is too big... Now after a cheap replacement as spare. Stopped now at another tire shop and waiting. Called the folks and caught up a little on things...needed to vent a little, too. Took a while to get to the tire. Threw in a load of laundry back at the hotel and nuked my leftovers in a sorry microwave while the others planned the evenings herping. After gassing up and swinging by arby's, headed to ***** for road cruising. I thought we weren't going to do *****? I'm sure the mexican cartel will kill us all...you'll know if this is my last post. The ***** turned out to be spectacular!!! Not high on numbers, but definitely on species. First high value target was a coralsnake, then thornscrub. Throw in a couple of blacktails and sonoran desert toads to boot. Met some other herpers while photographing the coral and they seemed very friendly. They also swung by while we had the thornscub and had found a dor of their own. Unfortunately we may have just clipped ours (a little intestine was sticking out of the cloaca...but we were able to push it back in and hopefully it lives). Now headed back to sierra vista. Its gonna be an early morning, even by what we've done previously. ________________________________________________________________________________ DAY 9 App i'm using for this log keeps crashing my entire iphone...very annoying. Wake up call was insanely early this morning...4:30am or something. I didn't have a chance to shower (didn't get super sweaty yesterday, but still...). Turned out to be a super long drive into the ***** for an attempt at obscurus. On the drive in, we saw 4 dor atrox. Is the border patrol too careless about avoiding wildlife?...seems like they fly down these dirt roads. By the time i geared up, the others were already taking off. I'v gotten a little tired of trying to just keep up and keep together on the hikes for this trip; it doesn't seem like that's all that important to the other guys. I just said forget it and started working the hill on my own. If the hike had been the first of the week, it probably would have killed me. Now i feel like my legs are at least under me a little, if not a bit wobbly from fatigue. I worked up and down, side to side, all over! Turned up a smallish blacktail and saw an unidentified garter zip away. From the hillside view, bp continued to be keenly interested in our presence. At least 2 stops and close inspection of our vehicle and even a low flyover of a helicopter. I had suggested we let bp know of our activities going in, but that didn't happen. We coalesced back at the truck within about a 30 minute window. The others had similar results...a couple of blacktails and van saw a patchnose (though i'm uncertain which one). I saw zero lizards. My thinking is that if you don't have food, you don't have these snakes. I continue to question the habitats we are hitting so hard for these willardi. About 85% of what ground we are looking at seems wrong to me...too exposed, too few crevices, and buried rock. Looking back from the truck after the hike, it started to become clearer which area and path we should have worked up the mountains. I was totally off on where I should have been. I wish van wouldn't just take off immediately when we stop the vehicle. He is the one with the intel and if he would just share a little more of what he has before we start out, we might actually know what we are supposed to be doing. After feeling completely whipped by the effort, we headed back toward sierra vista down the long, dirt, washboarded road. Finding a dor mexican hognose was a cool--though disappointing (due to the deadish status)--find...not quite enough to salvage the outing however. Specimen was fresh and in good shape so my pictures should be practically lifelike. Also had another short stop by 2 bored bp officers. We took a stop at bisbee to photograph the retired open-pit mine there...big, ugly blemish; though impressive in size. We also took a short drive to their downtown area. Really neat-looking old town...if not a bit on the touristy side. Back at the hotel now and sitting near the pool under an awning. If some smallish rain clouds blow over, i'll jump in the pool...but a couple of thunder pops have put me off that idea for now. I think the others are napping back up in the room. The plan for tonight--i think--is to try ***** again. Maybe it will live up to standards if the temps and rains don't muck us up again. I also heard talk of trying for willardi one last time for tomorrow morning. Please let it be ***** (which we've barely dipped our toe in, if you could even call it that). At least there, pretty much everywhere we look should be quite suitable on microhabitats; not so much of the distracting marginal stuff. I'm ready to pick up scutes tonight, ridge-nosed tomorrow...and be done with this thing. Went up to the room and took a 20 minute hot shower...almost fell asleep standing under the shower head. We swung out for a lighter dinner at quizno's and then headed toward *****. Temps and weather were much better. It was windy and storms with crazy lightning were hitting all around us. I would almost have rather set up the tripod and camera for storm pics than to herp. We bumped into a couple of other groups of herpers...including one we had seen at *****. All nice guys. We were supposed to meet up in ***** for a photography session at 10pm with our finds (the other guys already had a desert king and tantilla). Somehow we missed each other. Along the way, we turned up several "trash" snakes: atrox, longnose, glossy, night, desert king, and (our primary target) mahave. We got stopped by local le and checked on at a photo session by bp. I started really fading in and out, but since i was copilot, i tried to stay alert as much as possible. The drive back to sierra vista felt 10 times longer than normal. I hit the pillow and was out. ________________________________________________________________________________ DAY 10 Woke up, the others ate breakfast (i'll eat a granola bar on the way), packed up the truck, and checked out of the hotel. I didn't know where we were going until on the way. Headed back to *****...ugh. Haven't we already done this twice--or is it three times?--already? (and it's at least twice if not 3 times the drive time than to *****.) i think van is intent to prove to us they are here, which we know they are of course. Maybe we'll find one and hopefully fast; these willardi have really been a thorn in our side the entire trip. I'm sticking to the rocks around the campground and rocky cuts along the washes; i'm not going to wander around all over the upland stuff...i'll just wait back at the truck after i check the better microhabitats. If we don't turn one up in 30-40 minutes, i'm gonna say we aren't going to find one. Funny how just hitting a particular rock pile or kind of rock pile can make all the difference. Well we finally found the famous (or infamous?) rock quarry and turned up a willardi in short order. I was digging out an alligator lizard from a little rock pile and almost simultaneously glenn was calling out about the willardi (a gravid female). Two awesome, high value targets, back to back! Almost out of time and almost out of targets (wow, did we tear it up or what?), we're packed up and heading home. There is talk of a bonus road cruising event tonight in texas in hopes of viridis. Shortly on the drive out got another bonus find: sonoran mud turtle. It looked to be soaking up a little warmth from the pavement. I imagine this is a pretty good find given these are aquatic turtles that live in the desert. AZ is about to go bye bye. We've been talking the last couple of days about how we haven't turned up a live gopher snake (though we did get a couple of dors). Looks like we're out of luck and time for that one; i don't expect we'll get it on the interstate. Who's complaining? We stopped for gas about 11am and then i zonked out. Felt like 15 minutes later we were stopping for lunch (mcdonalds), but really it was an hour and a half! Shortly after that we stopped at the bolwin's continental divide store. What a lot of touristy junk! The jackalope on the counter top was cute. Driving, driving, driving... Trying to get to our target road cruising spot before it gets dark. Drove through the white sands military base in nm. What a huge flat expanse of nothing. I had to take an emergency pee break beside the road. Started seeing pronghorn along the road toward dusk. I had my doubts (these are very skittish critters), but i asked glenn to stop for an attempt at pics. A lone male watched me with intensity while i got out of the truck and into my camera gear in the bed. It wasn't super close, but i think i got a decent picture or two before it started walking away. We didn't make it to our target area in texas, so we went with the alternative in *****, nm. We road cruised quite a while and got a longnose, huge (and bitey!) glossy, barely dor atrox, and one of our primary targets: viridis! Didn't find a massasauga or milksnake despite our wishes. We crashed hard at the super 8. ________________________________________________________________________________ DAY 11 Woke up a bit later than intended (alarm clock malfunction or, more likely, just slept through it). Should be okay on time though...10 hours to go (and 1 hour lost to time zone crossing). Just about 7:30am when we drove out of the parking lot. We got a bag of ice and then stopped for about 5 minutes at a tin site to see if the "present" van had left under a piece of tin on a previous trip was still there. The entire tin piece was gone, though the others were still there... So maybe it got blown up by a storm or something? While we looked around, i turned up a great plains skink from under a big chunk of styrofoam. It ran into thick brush before i could get a hand on it. Now back on the road and it should be an uneventful homeward stretch. Stopped by sonic for breakfast on the go. Just ticking off the miles. Looks like we are skipping lunch?...2:30pm now. We just crossed the south canadian river in OK. Ate an early dinner at joe's crab shack in oklahoma city. Now about 110 miles out of fort smith. So ready to be home! I want to see my puppy dog. Stopped in salisaw, ok to top off the gas to leave brad with a relatively full tank. Calculating out the communal payments to set things even. Arrived at brad's residence a bit before 8pm and found 3 tacomas neatly lined up in the birchfield parking lot. I transferred my gear with some haste, waved goodbye, and headed out. It never felt so good to be driving my own truck, empty, listening to my own selection of music. I saw an unknown frog hopping across the road. I arrived at my parents' house around 9:15pm to pick up my dog. She was happy and i was happy! I yapped with the folks a little longer than expected, just catching up on events, and headed out about 10:30pm. I arrived finally home in bella vista just before midnight. I checked my mail, took a little look around my pond (saw a pair of gray treefrogs in amplexis on the house siding and about 4 leopard frogs along the edges), unpacked the vehicle, and surveyed my pet herps. A few tanks need cleaned and a little maintenance all around, but nothing major. A few of the "snapping turtle" eggs that had been given to me from a road killed specimen have hatched. 6 so far with maybe one or two potentially yet to come...about 3 other eggs are obviously bad. Turns out the snapping turtles are really red-eared sliders. Ha! People need to learn to ID; not every turtle is a snapper....m'kay? It's always good to come home and find that no major catastrophes have taken place! Now, i think i'll sleep for two days! THE END. Kory's Concluding ThoughtsThe herping was spectacular!!!...even if we worked super hard for what we got and the weather was uncooperative at times. (Who would have thought temps and rain would be sooo much more mild than back home?) The rest I think I could have practically scripted out before the trip ever started. Bad Ideas...
Good Ideas...
Top Herp Misses... Most Surprising Misses... Photographs Taken: 1305 + 71 iPhone; 12.7 GB Kory's Special ThanksBrad Birchfield, Glenn Manning, Jeremy Sloan, and James Van Dyke. Also, all of those friends and FHF members who offered up help and information. |
