On my return from the HCU-TX meetup I met up with Lou Hamby in Uvalde. Lou is doing research on reticulated collared lizards and I joined him in scouting some new back roads. Although the weather and habitat seemed perfect, we didn't turn up any. However, I was able to turn up my first-ever Texas Banded Gecko, Coleonyx brevis, under a board. Many of you know this species has been my White Whale in TX, and it was nice to finally find one myself before I moved!
The weekend after the HCU-TX meetup was the West Texas Herp Society/Austin Herp Society Field Meet in Sanderson. On the way down I saw the biggest roadrunner I've ever seen in my life:
Did a little road cruising (for pics only!) down the highways west of Sanderson after a rain shower and found TONS of toads. I usually just drive on past after the first billion. They're not really my thing (except one kind). I can ID the easy ones like red-spotted etc. but I haven't really bothered with this one (of which there were many)--Great Plains Toad, Bufo (=Anaxyrus) speciosus?
Heading south of the Border Patrol station on 385, I stopped to shine a cut and was thrilled to death to find my first alterna. It was much hairier than I had anticipated:
Actually, this was the second ringtail I had seen in the wild in my life, and the first on a cut. I initially had seen its eyeshine with my headlamp from afar. After discovering it, I walked back to my car to get my camera for pics. Then after photographing it, I walked back to my car again to get my video camera for footage. Then as I was filming it, it decided it had enough and ran up the cut to the top--and that's when I saw the much larger set of eyes which had been watching me the whole time. Based on the size and distance between them, I'm guessing it was a cougar. I RAN back to the car this time!
A "quick" trip later that night down Black Gap Road revealed little other than this male Texas Earless Lizard (Cophosaurus texanus) asleep on the road. I always get a kick out of this habit.
I found a Texas Banded Gecko later that morning, and I put it with some Reticulated (Big Bend) Geckos, Coleonyx reticulatus, LEGALLY collected with permit by Mike Price. The following is a series of pictures of the two species. I include so many because this species is under-represented on this forum (and in general!).
Left to right: subadult female reticulatus, male reticulatus, female brevis:
Male reticulatus and female brevis--note size difference between these two adult representatives of their species:
Closeup of the female retic. Note translucent quality to the skin.
brevis and female reticulatus. Although these two animals are roughly the same size, note the larger head (relative to body) of the retic:
Male retic, closeup:
That evening, I joined Mike Price in his Pathfinder for some road cruising. Little did I realize I was taking my life into my own hands, as we had all eaten Mexican food at lunch that day. We didn't turn up a whole lot--one large snake, possibly a glossy, moved off the road before we could backtrack to it. We did find this baby Mojave Rattlesnake, Crotalus scutullatus, lifer for me:
The next morning I took 1.21 gigawatts' worth of photos of this blacktail:
It was Sunday now, and most of the folks had already left to get back home in time for work on Monday. However, I had taken Monday off, so I went for one last TX road cruise.
Sadly, I didn't turn up anything other than a couple of DORs and this AOR spadefoot (the species escapes me and I'm sure someone will post to chime in with the info). This is the one kind of amphibian I'm always happy to see, because they look as surprised as I do when I find them:
I took several shots from all angles before this final one, where the mother ship was coming down to take it back to its home planet:
I was just using my headlamp for lighting instead of flash and it looked kinda cool.
The following weekend, I departed Texas (for good? Hope not!) and again stopped by the Wichita Mountains NWR. I only saw one Mountain Boomer within the refuge, and one outside the boundary. They were both skittish and did not allow me to approach, so the pics were terrible.
Now I'm in Kansas for the foreseeable future, and waiting for the temps to cool off to see what the flipping is like up here. Thanks for looking!
Chris
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Chris McMartin
www.mcmartinville.com
I'm Not a Herpetologist, but I Play One on the Internet
