Moving on to another location in the late afternoon we came across a very large and very aggrivated Southern Pacific Rattlesnake, unfortunatly there was a smudge of something on my lense but I think you can see by the girth of this one that it was a very large specimen, I'd estimate it at around 4.5 to 5 feet, it was hot and nervous and after a brief display and rattle it took off back from where it came, disappearing at quite a suprising speed!
Here's his habitat:
After another hour or so of searching I decided to head down to the Anza Borrego desert area, arrived just around sunset and it was very hot still, air temp was just south of 100 however the conditions were good with a slight breeze from the west and no moon, started cruising the road and as expected didn't see much of anything until around 10:00 PM, insect life started to show first, almost hit a Lesser Nighthawk (they tend to sit in the middle of the road at night, guess they have figured out that it's a good way to find their prey). Ran into my first herp of the night which was a Desert Banded Gecko (Coleonyx variegatus) then shortly after a second one, note the variations in pattern between the two, one being more spotted than banded, apparently they loose some of their banding with age and there are also local variations in their patterns.
The next encounter of the evening was a Colorado Desert Sidewinder (Crotalus cerastes laterorepens) crusing across the road, after the photo session and much to his aggrivation he was relocated to a more safe location off the road.
Found 3 more sidewinders later, all DOR, took back off for the mountains after that (it always depresses me to find a lot of DOR's, wish I could save 'em all...) for a few hours sleep.
More to follow...
