Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Here is the list of findings this year. The first date I took notes was on 4-8-04, so a few trips in March were overlooked. On those trips, we found several mojaves and a few glossies. We didnt differentiate west from east, but I know there was a difference as we never found cal kings, long nose, or southern pacifics on the east side of Lancaster. We never found shovel nose on the west side. Next year I will indicate exactly where we are.

More than half the snakes we found were Mojave rattlesnakes, which was to be expected. There were only a few nights that we didnt see one. Long nose snakes were the most likely to be alive on road, while Southern Pacific rattlesnakes were most likely to be dead (we started to find live southerns late in the year, so live snakes were catching up). Gophers had a 50% chance of being alive, and at 19% of total snakes, they were the second most common snake we found. Only one shovel nose was recorded, and it was out east, which we cruised less often than west. Most of the babies found belonged to the mojaves, but kings and southern pacifics had the highest percentages of babies out of the total for that species.

Here is the list with totals at the end. They are arranged in the order of finding. The mojave was the first one seen this year, followed by a long nose a few nights later. Next trip, a glossy appeared. It took a while to find the first gopher of the year.

Mojave

Total 70 (52% of total)
Alive 38 (54%)
Dead 32 (46%)
Baby 10 (14%)

Long Nose

Total 6 (4% of total)
Alive 5 (83%)
Dead 1 (17%)
Baby 1 (17%)

Glossy

Total 12 (9% of total)
Alive 10 (83%)
Dead 2 (17%)
Baby 1 (8%)

Gopher

Total 26 (19% of total)
Alive 13 (50%)
Dead 13 (50%)
Baby 6 (23%)

Cal King

Total 11 (8% of total)
Alive 8 (73%)
Dead 3 (27%)
Baby 4 (36%)

Shovel Nose

Total 1 (1% of total)
Alive 1 (100%)

Southern Pacific

Total 9 (7% of total)
Alive 4 (44%)
Dead 5 (56%)
Baby 4 (44%)

Totals

Total 135
Alive 79 (59%)
Dead 56 (41%)
Baby 26 (19%)

We have pictures of most of the live snakes, theyve been posted here frequently but if you wish to see any just ask!

Did you record time and mileage?

I am just wondering if you recorded miles driven or time spent per snake seen. Of course, you would have to include times you were shut out.
-----
Chris Harrison

Well we neglected that this year. We will record it next year. We got better and better data as the year went on, once I get a tube I can also record SVL for mojaves. I have some (not all) for the other snakes if interested. We found a 26" SVL long nose and a 32" SVL glossy snake and a 43" SVL king. Those were the biggest for those species. We shall have better data next year, including times and hopefully temperature of the road via infrared guns. I didnt think about mileage, Ill be sure to include that too. I also want an average per run, but I dont know how many nights we didnt see anything (it was less than 10 though, it was easy to find at least 1 snake almost every night). Im also going to include a little more locality data next time, and see how the numbers compare to this year.

Its nice to see you're attempting to derive real information from your activities.
These records can be very useful to field biologists, naturalists, and perhaps others, though [as in all experimental designs...]...you are neccessarily biasing [limiting] your observations to those serpents who cross roads at the times you hunt!
It might be very revealing to seperate your data in terms of the E/W routes & then graph the 2 data sets [lumping live & dead] in 3 month intervals; ex. Bar 1 Mar-May, Bar 2 Jun-Aug, etc.
Expressing your results in terms of observations per 100 KM or per hour would be useful & comparable w/ other data sets too.
Finally, your county or state DoT likely has traffic stats for the roads you cruise so you might link survivability or mortality w/ traffic volume.

The brain much like the bicep....loves & needs.... excercise

BTW, while its been along time since I was in Lancaster....memories are that I sure dont recall typical coastal viridis habitat near there, so whot-n-el are those Pacifics doing out there????

Thanks for the suggestions. Month by month may be important, as back in May the second most common snake was the glossy. Later in the year, it vanished, and gophers took over the second place slot. I thought that that was rather interesting. On the west side, there is a lot more traffic. Lot more roadkills. Out east, there are a lot of kills on the main traffic road which we take to get there, so there are often kills on the way home from the previous hours, but the main hunting is done on remote roads which seem to have a lot of snake traffic. For some strange reason, the snakes stopped showing up in our "spot". The weather was good as we would find live snakes on the way there and the way home, so I dont know what happened. We will try again next year, but the last time we went out east was July 2nd.

As for the helleris, they are out west. There is a road that leads into the hills where helleris reside. We find most of them up there. One was found at the intersection of 110&I which is out of their natural habitat, but they do occur there sometimes. They also intergrade with mojaves in the western antelope valley (See Stebbins field guide under southern pacific) so it is known that they occur in the flatland desert grassland west of Lancaster. Ive also heard of them being found in the poppy field. Next year we may also separate habitat, as we found some gophers and kings on the road leading to the angeles forest (to Lake Elizabeth) where the habitat is slightly changed. If you come out to Lancaster next season, I can show you where the helleris were found. Ive also heard of them being found on a road south of Palmdale. Ive hunted twice with no luck, but will try again in spring when they are more likely to be active.

I forgot to mention, on the bias, I know that this biases to nocturnal snakes. Most of these were active throughout the season (except the glossy, which I think prefers cooler weather). Also, I hear night snakes are common, but Ive never seen one. I also hear shovel nose are common on the west side, but the only one Ive ever seen was east. The more data collected from cruising will show better results as to the population.

Another strange note, we found several small long noses, but only one "big" one, measuring 26". That was actually our first long nose, after that, I dont think we saw one over 15". A few more years of cruising and we shall have a good sample of nocturnal snakes.

Thanks again for the suggestions, and I hope to get a GPS as well to track where they occur. Close to Lancaster, there are more gophers, and once you get out past 90th either direction, all the other snakes start to show up and gopher numbers seem to reduce.

Wild crotalid hybrids..hard to believe...sure like to see a pic....Ive never seen that here in Az...w/ the possible exception of some atrox-scoot thangs!
Sounds like youre well on your way to unraveling the current situation, again this level of anlysis is valuable in determining area population trends.

Buena suerte, jg

I havent found a hybrid myself (not knowingly) but the Stebbins field guide says it occurs. Also, there is a guy out here that does lectures with rattlesnakes for kids and such and he said he found one on 110th west back in the 80s, genetically proven and all. There was also a snake in his collection which I thought was a helleri from its head, but then I saw its tail and it shouted scute. Later he said he thought he had a hybrid, so I asked him which one, and sure enough he pointed out the one I suspected. It was still green but darker than a mojave, and its head didnt look like a mojave. These two species are also supposed to difficult to tell apart from what I heard, and that hybrids make it more difficult. From what Ive seen, they are easy to tell apart and Im sure hybrids are rare, seeing as I only found one helleri deep in mojave territory. I did, however, find a mojave about 100 feet from a helleri one night. This road has mojaves and then suddenly helleris, its pretty cool. I wish that I had GPS so I could see if we ever found another helleri on the mojave side, or a mojave on the helleri side, its hard to say late at night.

before GPS's....we had to use our odometers to figure out where we were at night! ya just log the mileage at a known point & it worked pretty well...A nip from a viridis-scoot hybrid must be about as bad as it could get!

Yeah really, just imagine mojave envenomation in the volume of a helleri! I dont actually know how bad the venom is, but on venom er a southern was brought in but the patient had signs of mojave envenomation. Dr. Bush said it was either venom evolution or hybridization. They showed the snake on tv and it looked like a southern to me as well. Patient was treated just fine (or so the show claimed).