Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Thursday AM, Ranger Amy Roberts & I are moving quietly through the riparian gallery...looking to see if the Zonetailed hawks we'd seen on a recent bird census perhaps liked the place enough to make it their home...Territorial screaming above us indicated this had become the case ...

Not wanting to disturb the lovebirds we quietly moved on, scanning the many pools & riffles for native fish, lowland leopard frogs, whatever else might be lurking...the air was warm & getting hotter...
High flows earlier in the spring had left wonderful debris piles all over the place. Soon the frantic alarm calls of an Aberts Towhee caught my attention...I moved closer to see what was the issue...

Ahh yes, what a fowl-minded beast; there it was..gluttonously engulfing the entire clutch...

Finally it appears to detect the nearby homonid...& appears to be considering me for the next course!

Awesome, just in time for those pics.congrats and thanks for posting em!

Seeing things like that in person pretty neat-(although I gotta dmit,I feel a little bad for the birds) but its the food chain.Great pics and post.Thanks for sharing,
jeff

Reminds me of a time when I was walking up a road in the Santa Ritas and a Sonoran whipsnake darted onto the road and grabbed a lizard right next to me and starts to swallow it. I just happened to have my camera hanging around my neck and managed to snap off three quick picks. One good one remains a favorite 'til this time. I remember very few foraging scenes in the wild. There was an Eastern fox raiding a clutch of red-winged blackbird eggs in a marsh and a black rat in a tree raiding a robin's nest. They are definitely worth recording. Gracias....TC

...is re-post the 3-5 best herp jpgs here, hopefully for a good long thread, jeez theres been so many over the years... as this isnt for profit, I dont think anyones copyright would be harmed.
Once these jpgs go out on the net... theyre essentially public domain.

Id have to put one of your blue racer jpgs in my first group...

John, I don't worry about copywrights, haha, but I didn't get very good pixs that day with the blue racers. I was using the wrong lens. Here's the habitat...

Here's a couple of blue racers at my friend Eddie's place...


I'm going to try for new pics next weekend in my ol' spot.

You can use the link to go to my Michigan habitat album and see all my pics there, and in larger format, if you want.
Terry Cox's Gallery

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Ratsnake Haven: Great Plains ratsnakes, Cali kings, and a few Eurasian ratsnakes

...Im think'n!

Those are truly incredible colors...Terry, wow!

What an excellent, if difficult... species for photography.

I think one of them ought to make the trex down south w/ you...& stay here

s

lol... I had to rescue a poor Cal King one day because he was caught like this by angry hominids just finishing up the last of their 4-H squab.

An astute observation, how many would have kept walking looking for snakes, not knowing why the bird was upset?? These are the types of observations I wish we ALL could see, consider, reflect on and enjoy as they are so rarely noticed. I once found an Ajo Mt. whipsnake through the frantic calls of canyon wrens early one morning, I wonder if he wasnt up to the same thing?
Nice shots, keep us posted on the albonotatus!
Cheers
Lateralis

Beautiful, that's fantastic, what a great series of pictures.
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Jeremy J. Anderson
Gem State Reptiles
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