Sometime in the late 1970's or perhaps early 1980's, I exchanged a number of letters with a high school student by the name of Alexander K. Johnson who live in Richmond. I believe his father was a professor at U.C. Berkeley. Alex was very interest in herps including the Rubber Boa. As I recall, he found a fair number of boas in the East Bay area in the hills east of Richmond. I recall him mentioning something about finding a number of specimens in the vicinity of San Pablo Reservoir.

During or shortly after his freshman year at Humboldt State U., I lost track of Alexander. But in surveying both the Rubber Boas and Sharp-tailed Snakes barrowed from the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology collection at UC Berkeley, I found a number of specimens of those species that Alex had collected and donated to the MVZ.

I know the species occurs in the greater Tilden Regional Park area as well. Although born and raised in Oakland, I never found a boa in that region and then moved away when 15 in 1948. As a scout and visiting Tilden, the Scout master showed us a juvenile boa that had been captured in the park by someone else. That was my first exposure to the species.

This is not the best time of year to search for the species but once you get some cooler, particularly cool night time temperatures and perhaps some rain, thereafter is the second best season for finding the species.

Since most of that region is basically grassland / brush type habitat, it would seem you either need to find areas in which there is junk to turn or redistribute such artificial cover objects in out of the way places within boa habitat.

You mentioned something about getting a fish/game permit. What type of permit are you getting?

Richard F. Hoyer (Corvallis, Oregon)

[ Reply To This Message ] [ Subscribe to this Thread ] [ Show Entire Thread ]