Reptile & Amphibian Forums

went to south tx. to look for milks and kings. around 8:30 pm at dusk i saw a foot of an adult indigo retracting back into the brush. i locked up my brakes to get a better visual and he was long gone. what a graceful snake. saw about 12 snakes, mostly garters, ribbons, and waters.

Any glimpse at a wild Drymarchon is a rare and exciting event!
By any chance were any of the garters you found eastern black-necked??

Thanks for sharing,

Jeff
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Jeff Snodgres
University of Arkansas
snodgresjeffreys@uams.edu
501.603.1947

texas indigos are in no way rare, i have found 5 in 30 minutes & in the spring time can find them at will. you must be looking to far north or west of their range. go south & they are very common around stock tanks & lakes
jeff

I'm familiar with Dry territory, as I lived in Del valley for several years, though the area is north of their range, I have looked from Laredo south to Brownsville.
I have seen several over the years, but in my experience, such has been a rare event, as they are no where near as common as the Tamnophis and Nerodia you indicated and I would love to see photos of them, as I simply have not seen that many on a given day, or even a year of searching. I once saw 10-12 strung up on a barbed wire fence thoug, but I really do not count such among the specimens I have found.
I would love to meet up with you next time I head down there, as it sounds as though yuo have locating them down to a fine art. I have family in Brownsville, Pecos and San Antonio and I make the rounds every once in a while and I recently bought a new truck that needs breaking in!

Best regards,

Jeff
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Jeff Snodgres
University of Arkansas
snodgresjeffreys@uams.edu
501.603.1947

Jeff,

I have to agree with tanks on this one. TX Indigos are still pretty common in parts of South Texas, but the problem is that most of the good habitat is either being destroyed or is inaccessible to the public.

I worked on some land SE of Alice as a summer job doing brush surveys (it sucked!). However, the one good part of the job was the number of indigos I saw. They were the most conspicuous snakes over much of the ranch and I rarely went more than a day or two without seeing one (or more). And I wasn't looking for them. If I really needed to see one, there were several whose favorite basking spots I knew and I could go to those areas in the morning and find one basking 5 days out of 7.

If you hike around cattle tanks in the morning in the brush country, or hike along the Rio Grande banks in the morning, you will undoubtedly find an indigo. For such a large snake, they are surprisingly inconspicuous among the dead black mesquite limbs. When I was trying to find my first, a friend told me to go to this ranch and walk along the river and watch for a mesquite limb to move. It worked.

If you just look by driving roads, you wouldn't expect to see very many. I don't think they wander onto well traveled roads that often.
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Chris Harrison
San Antonio, Texas

I agree with Chris..If you want to find Erb's there's plenty of them in TX and with the King and Kennedy ranchs, as well as many other huge spreads intact and not likely to break up anytime soon, I doubt the TX Indigo will ever truly be in danger..The land south of San Antone is deer hunter heaven and will never be broken up into "ranchettes" now found thru out the SW US..Nor likely to be sold to developers, as the land is not particularily scenic..
I also find Jeff's tragic scene of 12 Indigos hanging from a fence startling! Every visit I've ever made to S TX, everyone knows what an Indigo is and WANTS them on their land. I must believe that was snowbird who bought some land down there and not a Native of the Great Republic of Texas!!
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Carl W Gossett
Garage Door Herps
Monument,Colorado...northern territory of the Great Republic of Texas