Apparently Grismer,(2002) states that that intermediate snakes are the types most abundant where the nitida and conjuncta occur. The nitida form inhabits along the eastern foothills of the Sierra la Laguna from around Santiago to San Jose del Cabo, and Mira Flores appears to have the highest densities of these snakes.

It seems that the most pronounced banded "conjuncta" type animals range from approximately El Triunfo on south through the Cape region. It is said that snakes with darker-edged white bands can also be found as far north as Catavina in northern Baja.

I was vending at the Repticon show in Orlando about two years ago, and I happened to walk by a guys table that had all sorts of stuff on it. I saw a bunch of different types of kingsnakes at one areah, and immediately noticed a vague, stripe going down the back of one of the solid dark brown hatchlings, and I instantly knew it was a very nice "nitida" morph. This snake was marked as an MBK, and I pointed it out to him that this was a very textbook nitida phase Cal. king. He looked real surprised and told me one of his younger helpers there apparently mislabeled it. I was like,..."he sure did..LOL".

Anyway, I would have JUMPED all over getting a pair of them, as he had them labeled at a VERY ridiculously low price to begin with, but later on I noticed that he even dropped the pice a few bucks more!. He was practically GIVING them away at $22.00 each for killer textbook nitida specimens, but I just had too many other projects to deal with at home as it was, so I reluctantly passed. But WOW!, that was certainly one of the best deals on a nice unique king I have ever seen...geeez!

I also agree about some of the less "eye-popping" forms of snakes being more overlooked and underrated quite often in the hobby. Some of this has to do with people knowing absolutely nothing about them anyway. Many times you can only know of certain things if you have snake books and notice them in the books, then they become more interesting if you start getting a bit familiar with the natural history os certain snakes. Unfortunately, It seems that people in the hobby don't read about snakes nearly as much as they used to because of the internet, and do more popping around on the net noticing and focusing more on pretty colors and patterns in photos they see rather than learning more about the snakes themselves and their natural history.



~Doug
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

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