The original thread got me nostalgic, so I dug out some slides and scanned them last night. My scanner is tits but most of these images were taken with an older SLR and cheapie zoom about ten years ago on consumer Ektachrome, so please pardon the image quality. Anyway, there are lots of terrific memories from 1994 and 1995 tied to these two snakes and I'll attach each photo with a brief explanation. In a nutshell, those were two years that had record moisture in NorCal and it bade well for all local herpetofauna. I remember flipping twelve Cal Kings one afternoon in Davis and catching a hatchling Hypsiglena in Rancho Cordova (eastern Sacramento County) in '95; unheard of for those areas and something I was never able to do repeat during the ten years that followed, not for lack of effort.
In the El Dorado foothills, Merker and I had set our sights on getting this Blue-eyed Blonde project off the ground and were hitting our areas once or twice per week from February through early May, until it dried out and sent the snakes back below the surface. We both were able to catch a pair of the Blondes in '94 and subsequently able to sire F1 animals in '95. A sunny April day in the foothills, nice breeze, lots of wildflowers, Crotalus viridis out basking, Thamnophis elegans hunting for tadpoles in the little creeks, a Coluber dashing by here and there. What could be better?
Separately, I was on my own crusade to get Davis Blackbellies. Fortunately, Both Davis and El Dorado County are within 30 minutes of Sacramento, so I could hit the foothills on Saturday and then beat up Davis on Sunday. By comparison to the foothills, Davis is a [bleep] to hunt because you're entirely dependent upon luck to run across the surface debris that Lampropeltis likes to hide under along the canal banks. This flotsam, which was deposited and renewed each winter with the floods, was not readily visible from walking along the levee tops. You had to be down in the chest-high mustard and grass and practically trip on the boards, driftwood, etc. before you would see them. There are no secrets to flipping Davis kings. It;s just tough and time-consuming.
This attached photo is of the prettiest El Dorado Blonde I ever collected, May, '95, beneath a piece of plywood. Please notice the blue eyes. Only males get the freaky speckled look. Females will have the blue eyes, light color, and red irises, but the wierd mottling seems to be a gender-related thing. Hope you enjoy these photos...
