Reptile & Amphibian Forums

A friend and I are making our annual pilgrimage to the Big Bend region May 26-June 3. Just wondering who else is planning to be down there about that time, and where are you basing? Our tentative plan is to stay in Alpine, since it is centrally located between the Davis Mntns. and more southerly destinations like the River rd and Black Gap (not to mention the gorgeous red coachwhips near Alpine-got a nice mature male last June, and would love to find a mate for it this year. Since our percentage of chases to actual captures is abysmal, I figure we up the odds by staying nearby!).

Anyway, we'd love to get together with other herpers down there. Also, it would be interesting to hear what others' specific goals are for their own trips.....

best regards
Brad Chambers

Carston Zoldy and I will be there the dark of the moon in May and basing out of Marathon, I believe but maybe Del Rio. We are of course on the hunt for graybands but I would like to pair up my male bogey with an adult female from Langtry and heck it's all good there! Hope to see others as well! Good luck and happy herping!
Todd Hughes

Great Todd! We're after alterna as well, but certainly not to the exclusion of the host of worthy herps of the Trans-pecos. We'll be on the lookout when we're in the Langtry area-maybe we can help you out!

Two other goals for myself: Find a mate for last year's female River Rd "sockhead" splendida,and locate unusually-colored ground snakes (Sonora) to add to my small colony (yes you heard right lol).

Brad Chambers

Sounds cool Brad and hope to see ya' 'round the Bend! Here's a Brewster county male splendy that Forky put me on. Need a female as white as he is and I will be happy!
Todd Hughes

That's awesome you keep Groundsnakes. What do you feed them?
To answer your other questions I mostly want to find a Davis Observatory female alterna and female celaenops. I also would like to find a light phase South of Loma Alta. I was planning on going at the end of June.
PS I have seen a few really nice pink Coachwhips west of Sanderson too.

Ground snakes are really awesome and under-appreciated reptiles. They are quite hardy and beautiful, and usually feed ravenously on small, gut-loaded crickets and waxworms. Last year the unicolored gray female my good friend Troy caught for me in Black Gap (during our mid-June trip)laid 2 good eggs, one of which we were able to hatch out. The neonate was tiny indeed, but is doing fine on pinhead crickets.

Good to find another Davis Mntns. afficianado-our experience on the observatory road last year was frustrating, with only a DOR bairdi to show. But nearby on 17 we found a nice lepidus. The Boy Scout Rd. yielded a beautiful blue-gray juvie lepidus that same night, this just twenty minutes after we witnessed a highway patrol car make snake sausage out of a huge crossing suboc!

However, the high point of the trip had to be watching my pal Carl Ackerbauer get chased back into the truck by an angry sunspider!

Brad Chambers

Thanks for the Groundsnake info. I don't keep any insectivores because I have enough work taking care of mouse and lizards feeders. I assume they probably like to be fed more often than rodent eaters too. I always like to see the Groundsnakes though. They are something really neat and variable that I don't ever see around were I live.
I have found several Baird's on the Observatory Rd., a few leps including a gorgeous pink and rust one but yeah it can be slow. Two years ago I found alterna and celeanops males there. That was after 8 years of hunting though. Granted that is only 2 or 3 nights a year. I will hit it hard now though, I don't want it to take another 8 years for me to pair them up.

That's my problem-with so many choices, I find it hard to concentate on any one or two locales! And it's easy to make the wrong choice. Last year we spent one of our first nights in Black Gap. Caught a big, gorgeous Pituophis first thing, then a couple of storms hit-not a single snake for 4 hours of hunting and road cruising (but lots of spadefoot and red-spotted toads and a banded gecko as consolation prizes). The next night Troy headed for Black Gap while we hit the River Rd. You guessed it-we did okay (a couple of Subocs, a nice baby blacktail and the only splendida i've ever seen there). But Troy came up with literally scads of snakes-i dont recall all of them, but they included blacktails, a scute, several subocs, the aforementioned ground snake-all told a couple of dozen seen over just a couple of hours! TANJ!

We'll try to guess better this year-about the only consistent rule we came up with was-"if it gets too cool, head for a lower elevation!"....

Brad Chambers