The next day (Friday, August 15th) I decided to do some mountain exploration around Pine Valley, Cuyamaca, Kitchen Creek and Mt. Laguna. The temperatures were again very high, near 100 even in the mountains and I spent most of the day looking for shade. The evening however turned out to be a little better than it had been the night before, the first herp of the evening was a nice Southwestern Speckled Rattlesnake (Crotalus mitchellii) found in the Kitchen Creek area:
This was such a docile individual, it wanted to do nothing other than retreat into a tight ball, never rattled, never struck, I hooked it with a snake stick to move it further off the road and it was totally cooperative, as soon as I let it down it just slowly moved off as if it was no bother, found a nearby hole and disappeared to safety.
Here’s the local habitat for mitchellii:
Also found a nice San Diego Gopher Snake (Pituophis catenifer annectens) in the Pine Valley area:
Here’s the local habitat:
And a nice, very dark Southern Pacific Rattlesnake (Crotalus oreganus helleri) in the Cuyamaca area:
That was it for day 2 of my 4 days of summer herping…
CONTINUED…
