Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Dell said that he wanted to see some gentilis...Here're some gentilis as well as some old shots of other milks...

We'll start with gentilis...Hopefully most of these are shots that yall haven't seen yet...

Here's a bad shot of my first South Dakota Pale...

Here's my first gentilis ever...

You'll have to excuse the poor quality of this next shot, but I had to include it. This snake comes from the eastern portion of gentilis range...the snakes from this population ARE gentilis according to my observations as well as literature, yet they often times have red capped heads and GORGEOUS body patterns that stand out amoung gentilis...

Another Pale, Cherry County...it was found in a place were normally only viridis are found...

Here's a w/c taylori...

Alright folks, now for some more syspila...

These first few syspila are special...They come from a highly classified area in central MO about 3 hours east of KC...and this population has consistantly produced w/c syspila that look like captive F3 generation animals...

...and here's a wierd looking KS syspila that I caught back in 2002...yet another crappy scan, lol...

I'll close with two MO syspila...

Hope yall enjoyed! Sorry about some of the crappy scans...I still have quite a few more shots to scan in...So maybe I'll drop a few more posts throughout the winter.

Keep up the AMAZING photo posting folks. I don't remember ever visiting this forum so much!

Wow!,....that's quite a nice medley of pics!.......looks like the one in the second pic is doing okay in the "pinky munch" department!..LOL

In addition, I agree that some of those scans probably won't make it into the next edition of National Geographic!..LOL

just funnin' with ya!........great stuff!

~Doug
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"Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!"

The one in the second pic was found under a giant fallen barnside in the middle of a rockless pasture with two other screamer gentilis. The snake definately had a meal in it...it was released after the photo...

n/p
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"Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!"

I only have time to for a quick question, but you can belive I'll be back in on this thread later.

Your first South Dakota Pale? What? You have found more?
I've gotta belive your in a minority of field herpers that can say they have even found one South Dakota Pale.
Sorry to jump past the gentilis post here. But lets see the other photos of the SD pales, please.

O.k. back to our regular scheduled gentilis.

South Dakota milks aren't all that difficult to find. I've found them in the sandhills of SD, but some people I work with have found them further up in the black hills region. They did a one-month long herp count of a state park up there and turned up four. The interesting thing is that there are no lizards to be found in the park...the milks must be surviving on rodents and juvenile snakes like Smooth Greens and Black Hills Redbellies...

The area where I've found them has produced multiple snakes in a single afternoon...but none of them are anything worth writing home about.

Man, I can't wait to get up there for some flippin'!
Nathan

Thanks Nathan...Keep me up to speed on your plans...

Nice run of pics Chad! Thanx for putting those up and giving us the triangulum tour of KS!
Jeff

No problem Jeff. Don;t forget about the milks from Nebraska, South Dakota, and Missouri!

Awesome group of photos, Chad! I've got an itch to come to KS that just won't go away until I make it down there. On that note, I sent you an e-mail to your FHF addy. Let me know if you don't get it.

-Cole

YGPM...

man I love those central MO syspila. those are awesome.

Dave
DNS Reptiles

South Dakota Pales not hard to find? Four found in a month by a group of herpers (how many herpers). If it's three or four people looking and flipping that sounds like alot of work to me Chad. And equals not so easy to find SD Pales.
Unless they were found in December.

Where we are finding Pales in Bighorn co. there are no lizards either. I've never seen any and I've crawled all over these hillsides.
These Bighorn Pales are on the bigger side of Pales too. Mouse eaters. Snake eaters too? I don't know about that, sure maybe.

Now go west 80 miles to Carbon co. and you find Sagebrush lizards all over that habitat. I've never found a Pale in Carbon co. but have seen a few Carbon co. animals and they are on the small side of multistrata.

And South Dakota Pales not worth writing home about. If I were you Chad I'd document every SD multistrata I found. Fugly or screamer. But I haven't found as many Pales as you have.

In your photo post, I love that 3d gentilis w/ all the crossovers. Kinda looks like some of the crossed over taylori you see.
Speaking of taylori, do have locality on the taylori in this post? Which btw that is sweet looking.

And your first gentilis ever confirms to me that your a spoiled
svant herper. Who finds that nice of a gentilis as their first gentilis. A herping prodigy, that's who.

Oh, and your Thomas co. Pales were outstanding animals, I liked seeing them, thanks.

Stillwater co.

Bighorn co.

One of Cole's big beastie South Dakota Pales

Bighorn co.

Bighorn co.

-Dell

Wow, thanks Dell. I'm not a herping prodigy though, anyone can do what I do as long as they're willing to be irresponsible and only look for herps as their life's ambitions, lol.

I think you're onto something Dell. I've put some thought into this same thing: prey - milk snake relationships effecting the size and coloration of the animals. I mean of course prey is related to size, but it's interesting how easily obervable this is in Pales especially. Those little bastards that survivie primarily on lizards, like the nice sandhill snakes, are dwarfs who look amazings....But the Pales who survive on other snakes (and they do Dell, one of the big momma Pales that the CSP group found regurged a redbelly AND a young green snake) and primarily rodents...seem to grow t a larger maximum size and they get uglier sooner.

Here' re some SD CSP pales...

Here's the big fugly female that regurged...

I thought they had more pics than that from SD, but I guess not...

Anyway...Like I said, SD milks really aren't hard to find...at least in certain areas. The sandhills snakes don't seem to be difficult to find...and the black hills animals, although more challenging, really aren't that hard to find either. The field survey was conducted from late June into July...Which begs the question of whether or not that time is sufficient to cover the small window of activity that Pales most likely utilize in early June, I think they missed it. The four snakes that they found were surface active either under rocks or on the road...and since all of the snakes were found in early July and late June, I'd bet my bottom dollar that the ones found under rocks were in shed and that's why they were out.

What's my point? Only that if some experience milk snake hunters had gone on the trip to SD and had done so a few weeks earlier, more Pales would have turned up...

Awesome milks Chad.