Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'd like to visit AZ this summer. I'm most intersted in natural history photography particularly of herps. I'd like to collect some specimens for personal projects and educational purposes.

Is the summer a good time for herps or is it too hot for them too? What is the best part of the state to visit for herping? I'd really like to hike, camp, take photos and collect a few herps.

Thanks for the info,

Brian

Brian,

I lived there for over two years and loved every minute of it. Herping anywhere outside of Phoenix should yeild alot of herp sightings. It will be unbareable hot now, but even in the dead of summer the chucks are out. I had the best luck with telephoto lenses as soon as the sun came up. You would get about 1/2-1 hour of herps coming out to sun. Road cruising is always a hit.

There is also No. AZ during the summer. Up near Sedona to Flagstaff offers some wonderful areas that diurnal herps are active even in the mid summer.

good luck

One of the easies herps to find in AZ are geckos. They have mediterranean house geckos, and banded geckos (coleonyx). YOu will fing the mediterranean geckos on walls and sometimes on the ground, and you will almost always find the banded geckos on the ground. don't worry about a bite because they do not hurt much, (or at all). Good luck. And another thing is that coleony and mediterranean geckos are very easy to keep in captivity. Just feed them crickets and provide an undertank heater on one side of the enclosure. Also, if you collect them, DO NOT keep 2 males of coleonyx aniwhere near eachother, they will fight and maybe even kill. You can identify the males by the spiky protrusions on each side of the base of the tail. I do not find this problem with the mediterraneans though.
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