Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hey yall,
I don't regularly post in this forum but I am doen in Southeastern AZ doing filed research. I will be posting more pics soon. We have only been here a week and have already found some awesome stuff.

Cheers
bigdnutz

Sorry about the typos I was in a hurry.

Here's a longnose that we saw get hit by a car. We collected him and amazingly he recovered by the next morning.

Nice snake, lots of red. Where was it hit?

We are planning to take a trip to AZ, hopefully we will find a good area to do some cruising, but Im guessing its too hot right now. What time and temps were these out at?

These were all found at night out on Highway 80 about 1hour north of Douglas. Some were found in NM also. We leave every night at around 7:30pm and see stuff until about 11:00pm.

Youre doing research, right? On what?

Isnt the traffic heavy on that road?

We are researching relative abundances of snakes in this area. The traffic isn't too heavy. Some nights there isn't hardly any. We just got back and our count was 2 C. scutulatus, 1 C. atrox, 1C. molossus and one Pituophis. It was a great night.

Love those molossus! Have a picture of that one? Id like to see it. I really like the yellow colored ones, Im not sure what locale it is. I didnt realize there were scutulatus out there, thats our most common snake here in California (my area that is). They are green in color here, I hear that they are not like that outside of this local area. Ive seen pics of many different colored mojaves from Cali and Arizona, and even Texas. Interesting the different phenotypes of that one snake, one that we see green all the time may be unrecognizable to us when we find one somewhere else....

Happy Hunting!

This is a Gila we found that had been hit and was dead. We found it around 10:00pm near Granite Gap on Hwy 80. They aren't typically found on the roads this late so it must have been hit earlier. The card is just to give the picture some relative size. Our field guide says they max out at 14 inches S.V. and this guy was exactly 14. It was an exciting find!

He's a good test of your ID skills
The answer will be in the next post.

It's a Longnose color morph. Small bits of red in the tail and near the head will give it away.

Wow, that is a nice one! I have never really come across any unusual morphs of long nose snakes, despite the huge number that I have found in the past.
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Jaren
Desert Canyon Reptiles

A couple of things BigD......first, if you want us to guess, don't put up the answer 3 minutes latter...LOL. Leave it for a while. Also, why is the pic labeled "lampro......" as in Kingsnake? BTW- found a Longnose in Calif a couple of months ago very similar to that one, but even more exagerated. I'll dig up a pic. I also don't think that "Claris" phase shows up in Az very much at all, so you might want to check on that. Nice pics overall.

Eimon

I have found numerous longnose without much red. They are not all that uncommon in Arizona. The one I found last month, less than a mile from the town limits of Bagdad, had distinct banding and from the vehicle we both called out "kingsnake".
Fooled us again.
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No good deed goes unpunished!

I'm not sure exactly why I was under that impression, but I'll drop that idea. It may be just because I've seen so many "Claris" in Calif, and very few pics posted of AZ Claris by comparison. Interesting to note jeffp's hatch also. One would almost think that the aberrants are all related, but seem to pop up more frequently than others have thought.

That was my bad on the name. We have seen and collected so many things I mistakenly named it under lampro. About ten minutes after I posted I noticed it and changed the original file name.

another claris phase up here in tucson 3 days ago.

Hi,
Heres a clutch I produced last year from wc parents-(both normal looking) I thought they were very neat looking, and a very underarted colubrid.
Jeff Teel

Captive Bred Tri-colors

Hi,
Heres the male that was most striped, really neat looking.
Jeff Teel

PS- I have no idea why the clutch pic is showing up blurry, if it looks that way on here, go to the site and look under the other snakes gallery, its on there.

Captive Bred Tri-colors

Hi,
There was only one normal looking longnosed with red in it in this clutch, 2 were black and white, 3 striped, and 1 normal, and one egg thta didnt hatch had a dead in the egg baby in it, it was a striped one too.
Jeff Teel

Captive Bred Tri-colors

great pics!! did you see any cal kings? Dave

This is a Phrynosoma we luckily spotted while driving down HWY 80 in NM. We stopped and he stayed as still as a rock for all the pictures we took.

This was an unexpected find. My research buddy Ben says "I gotta pee" and wanders off. Then I hear "Rich, you gotta come see this!" Right in the intended line of fire was this Sonoran Mountain King.

n/p

You've got me inspired. Great pics. I'm brand new to Tucson so there are a lot of new animals to find.