First stop was Bangkok. I dropped by the Red Cross Snake Center, which milks venomous snakes to make anti-venom. It is the second oldest of its kind in the world.

Staring down a king cobra (Ophiophagus hannah), the largest venomous snake in the world:

Monacled (aka siamese) cobras (Naja kaouthia), the most common cobra species in Thailand. One is an albino:

Milking a monacled cobra:

The nocturnal and highly venomous banded krait (Bungarus fasciatus):

The not-so-dangerous but still venomous, and very handsome, mangrove snake (Boiga dendrophila):

By this point I was totally stoked to go in the jungle and find some herps of my own!

The next day my Dad and I flew to Phuket, a continental island in southern Thailand, which is the most affluent and popular tourist destination (perhaps after Bangkok) in the country. Although much of the island is developed, sizable tracts of rainforest and agricultural land remain, and as I soon found out, even backyards contain an abundance of herps. We stayed at my Dad’s friends house near the edge of the jungle.

By far my favorite photo of the trip is of this agamid lizard that I noosed next to my chair by the swimming pool;. it is most likely a forest crested lizard (Calotes emma), although this particular specimen lacks the characteristic spine above the eye:

At nightime we found an assortment of frogs in the backyard, not 100% positive on the species IDs since I am lacking an adequate book:

Limnocharis?

Polypedates leucomystax?

Chubby frog, Kaloula pulchra?

The jungle also contained some interesting critters. I caught these forest crested lizards with my trusted lizard noose. I’m not sure if they are a different species from the one pictured above due to the spine above the eye as well as the enlarged head spines relative to the back spines, though most likely they are the same.

When I saw this piece of tin laying in a clearing next to a puddle, my heart skipped a beat. My instincts told me there would be a snake beneath it:

Sure enough, the tin concealed this 4 ft, highly obnoxious and pugnacious copperhead rat snake (Elapha radiata). Although it is non-venomous, it did not hesitate to make me bleed:

What a rush!

Next it was time for some scuba diving. My dad and I dove for three days in the Phi Phi island group, as well as Shark Point and King Cruiser wreck. Here are the best pictures from these dives.
Shark point underwater:

Phi Phi island (pronounced “pee pee”)

Me!

My dad:

Clownfish were abundant at most dive sites. This is the false clownfish (Amphiprion ocellaris). The true clownfish has more black, although both are pretty much the same thing:

Crab:

Lobster:

Shrimp:

Crown-of-thorns starfish:

Here are two cuttlefish mating. Unfortunately, pictures cannot capture their exquisite flashing colors. They would put chameleons to shame:

I was ecstatic to find 2 juvenile sea kraits, Laticauda colubrina. These are one of my favorite animals of all time, and I certainly burned my air supply when I got a glimpse of these lil’ beauties. Crikey, they’re gorgeous! There is something incredible about finding a snake next to corals, fish and sharks.

This first one (two shots) was found at shark point:

I had previously read that Laticauda don’t dive much deeper than 30 ft, but I found this one happily swimming at 70 feet:

A honeycomb grouper (Epinephulus merra) hanging out with a white-eyed moray eel (Siderea thysoidea). Eels are the preferred food source of Laticauda.

However, this giant moray (Gymnothorax javanicus) was much to large for a sea snake to tackle:

I was stoked to find a couple sharks, my favorite group of fish:

Bamboo shark (Chiloscyllium punctatum) hiding in a cave at 70 ft, this is a new shark species sighting for me, bringing the total to 15:

Zebra (aka leopard) shark (Stegostoma fasciatum), this is the species that shark point is named after:

Hawksbill sea turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) are my love and joy, especially after volunteering with the Hawksbill Turtle Recovery Project in Hawai’i. Thailand has quite a few of these guys. This one is munching away on some “bubble coral” as I like to call it.

This one is a resident of the King Cruiser wreck which sunk in 1997:

You really had to watch where you put your hands or feet, with good reason.

Scorpionfish (Scorpaenodes) have superb camoflauge and painfully venomous spines:

Lionfish (Pterois) were common and posed nicely, I found as many as 6 in one spot at times. The different species are difficult to discern from one another, being distinguished by the number of dorsal and anal spines:

Indian lionfish? (Pterois muricata)

Common lionfish? (Pterois volitans)

One of the more special finds of the trip was this ornate ghost pipefish (Solenostomus paradoxus), another lifer for me… if our dive guide hadn’t known where it lived I never would have seen it.

Soft corals and anemones were lush and abundant, thriving on the cooler plankton rich upwellings along the steep limestone walls:

Some other nice fish shots:

Black-blotched porcupinefish (Diodon liturosus):

Soldierfish (Myripristis), these make loud chirping noises that seem to revertebrate through your skull:

Well that’s the best of them, hope you enjoyed!

On Tuesday and Wednesday I went backpacking in the Ohlone wilderness, from Del Valle lake in Livermore to Sunol Regional Park. I didn’t see another soul for the two days I was on the 20 mile Ohlone wilderness trail. It was very peaceful. I climbed ridges only to drop down into canyons and start climbing anew; I climbed Rose Peak, the highest publicly accessible point in Alameda County; I dropped by the now-dry Murietta waterfall; and I saw lots of wildlife. Lots of wildlife, you say? Why certainly. While hiking through oak woodland, pine forest, and grassland dotted with rock outcroppings, I found four garter snakes and a gopher snake, hundreds of birds including woodpeckers, jays, crows, red-tailed hawks, and golden eagles, squirrels, deer, frogs, lizards, and tarantulas. I also found fresh coyote and bobcat tracks all over the place. Since I was by myself I often travelled very quietly and was able to sneak up on animals.

Oh yeah, by the way, I found my first tiger salamander crossing the road on Monday night, the first real rain of the season. Crikey! Bye bye Richard Pombo, tiger salamanders win and you lose!

So here are the Ohlone pics.

Climbing out of Lake Del Valle:

Rocky ridge:

Rock outcrop, I’ll come back here in the spring for rattlesnakes:

Pine forest above 3000 ft:

Another particularly nice rock outcrop:

Rose peak, only 32 feet shorter than Mt. Diablo. It’s something like 3800 feet tall.

The view of Mt. Diablo from Rose Peak:

First snake of the day, an aquatic garter snake (Thamnophis atratus):

And another (this shot is in situ):

And another:

Here’s a particularly pugnacious gopher snake (Pituophis catenifer) who thinks he is a rattlesnake:

Click here for a funny video of this badass gopher snake! (7.3 MB)

Didn’t get any photos of the last snake, that one got away (another garter).

*Phew*… Now for some of the last pics I got in Hawaii. I will be brief here since I am getting bored.

My “adoped” family from the turtle project, Brian, Hadley, and Susannah (aka “Juice”):

Miss you guys! Hope you guys are having lots of hatchlings on the beach!

Coconut Island on Oahu, where the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology is located:

This is the big crater we lived next to on the Big Island:

And some late-season hawksbill activity at Pohue, my favorite beach in the world:

Thanks for looking!

Giant moray:

Whitemouth moray:

Harlequin shrimp:

I just bought a speargun, so tomorrow I will go spearfishing on the Kona coast. Next week I will go scuba diving with manta rays, so hopefully I will have some more good pics to post soon!

So enjoy the pics!

My favorite backcountry beach, Halape.

I found this hatchling in the middle of the day, about to die on the baking hot sand. I rescued him, put him in a bucket with moist cool sand, and released him into the ocean that night.

The new female hawksbill that we tagged. This is the turtle restraining position. The flippers are lifted up so they can’t get any leverage, and the towel shields their eyes and helps keep them calm during the tagging/measuring procedure.

Collecting data…

As far as the hawksbill turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata) goes…. it is critically endangered. There are only about 45 nesting females left around the Big Island. 90% of the Hawaiian population nests on the southeast shore of the Big Island. It takes a hawksbill THIRTY YEARS to reach maturity, and then females breed every 2-4 years, laying 3-4 clutches of at least 100 eggs each. So each year we have about 15 females nesting over the summer.

So we volunteers stay up until 2 am every night watching the nesting beaches, marking, monitoring, and excavating nests, trapping feral predators like mongooses, building nest cages, escorting hatchlings to the ocean, and educating the public. It’s a pretty rewarding thing to do.

So onto the pictures….

Nesting beach habitat:

More habitat:

To reach some of the beaches, we have to hike over 6-11 miles of this stuff:

In Hawai’i, green turtles are unique in that they come ashore to bask in the sun or sleep at night. I suppose this is because Hawai’i does not have any land predators that can kill a green turtle, and they are protected by law.

I was lucky enough to witness the first hawksbill nest of the season hatch before my very eyes. As the sun set, I pitched my cot next to the nest and started reading my book, looking over periodically at the nest. Around 8:15 pm, an hour after sunset, I looked over to see 1 hatchling sitting on top of the nest. In the time I scrambled to grab the camera and my sandals, 20 more popped up and started running for the ocean. That night, we counted and measured 45 hatchlings. I only took 3 pictures in order to minimize the disturbance of flash photography (hatchlings are very sensitive to light, which they use to orient themselves to the ocean). This one hatchling I photographed did not seem to be negatively affected by the flash, and scrambled to the sea without any other light sources as well as his brothers and sisters.

What a cool experience!

And finally, I have been spending a lot of time free-diving around. I have found at least 20 green turtles underwater this way. Yesterday, I brought out my underwater camera, and was well entertained by a couple of turtles.

Well, hope you enjoyed!

Aloha, Andy

It all started when I woke up at 5:30 this morning and hitched a ride with a nice lady named Jessica from the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park over to Place of Refuge on the Kona coast. I slept most of the way as we drove through the barren, lava-covered Ku’a desert on our way to the lusher Kona coast.

Place of Refuge is a pretty cool place. Supposedly it is the best shore diving spot on the Big Island. It also is sacred to the natives (it used to be the royal grounds for the ancient Hawaiian kings) and has a lot of cool history behind it, which I won’t get into here. Anyway, I was dead tired when I got there, so I prepared to take a nap on the beach before getting in the water. Until I saw a few dozen dorsal fins slicing through the clear blue water.

Since it was 7 am, I was the first person on the beach, and I had no idea how long the Hawaiian spinner dolphins would stick around in the little sheltered bay. So I scrambled to put on my mask and fins, hopped across the lava rock, and splashed into the ocean. Immediately, my eyes were dazzled by crystal-clear water, bright yellow coral, surgeonfish, butterflyfish, and parrotfish. The sea was full of the crackling sound of snapping shrimp. I swam towards the dolphins quickly, passing over a big “Aloha” sign on the bottom of the ocean. Suddenly the bottom dropped off to at least 100 feet, and soon I couldn’t see it at all.

Swimming through the deep cobalt blue, I began to hear a symphony of high-pitched whistles and clicks. I grew very excited; I had never seen a dolphin underwater before. I kept swimming further and further offshore. Finally, I gasped as the sillouettes of 3 dolphins materalized out of the blue like ghosts ahead of me. They were beautiful! My childhood dream had finally come true!

Soon I realized that there were many more dolphins around. They swam in groups of 5-10, but there were at least 50 in the area. Most of them seemed to be resting after their nighttime hunt offshore, swimming slowly in formation, side by side. Others were more lively – playing, jumping, spinning through the air, swimming belly to belly, chasing each other, and whistling loudly. There were mothers with baby calves only 3 feet long, big scarred adult males, and everything in between. The sea was filled with their song, and I will never forget it.

Trying to contain my excitement and relax, I took several deep breaths of air, kicked my fins in the air and dove for the bottom, leveling off at 30 feet. I did my best to swim like a dolphin, hoping to excite their curiousity. It seemed to work, as several groups came by to check out this crazy human that seemed to think he is a dolphin. A few passed within five feet of me, almost close enough to touch, looking me straight in the eye. And the sea was full of whistling and singing.

For the rest of the day, I dived with the dolphins and explored the surrounding coral reef. In addition the the dolphins, I saw over a dozen green turtles and two large moray eels thrashing and biting in a territorial dispute (one of them gashed the other’s head wide open, but it seemed to be alright). It wasn’t long before the crowds arrived and 30 other people were out floating in the water. Most of them couldn’t free-dive and simply bobbed around on the surface.

Later in the afternoon, the mood was more tranquil. There were more people in the water, but the dolphins became much quieter as they rested. They swam slowly in formation around 50 feet deep, rising every few minutes in small groups for a breath of air. I too, was in a very relaxed and tranquil mood. I swam out there for hours. Sometimes I would take a deep breath and slowly dive down to 40 feet and swim alongside them. As long as I swam like a dolphin and didn’t directly approach them, they didn’t mind my presence at all.

Now why didn’t I bring out my camera…. I am such a knumbskull… well, I will return soon with my underwater camera. Apparently, they often frequent the bay during the daytime, using it as refuge from big hungry sharks while they digest their nighttime meal. In the late afternoon, they get rowdy again, jumping and spinning as they head offshore to hunt. So maybe I will get another chance for photos.

Well, till next time… Aloha!!!

Work. I released side-blotched lizards (Uta stansburiana) back into the wild in the western central valley as part of Barry Sinervo’s long term research project. It was a cool job, I got 60 bucks for a half day’s work. It was hot – one day topped out at 113 – but I saw quite a bit of wildlife nonetheless. I saw golden eagles, deer, a coyote, and hundreds of ground squirrels. I caught a huge, mean gopher snake crossing the road on a mid-July morning that hissed, lunged at my face repeatedly, and generally behaved like a western diamondback. I also saw a threatened San Joaquin Coachwhip. And of course there were lizards everywhere. The heat seemed oppressive at times, but I learned to live with it. It’s a reality of life.

I also went to Arroyo Seco, a beautiful river gorge in the heart of the San Lucias. Man, that place was awesome! Gavin and I camped out the night before then hiked out to the gorge in the morning. The rock walls of the gorge plunged down as deep as 15 feet into the river, creating some nice jumps. Gavin found a two-striped garter snake basking on the river bank, a western pond turtle sunning itself in a tributary, and a gray fox lapping water during the blistering heat of the afternoon. We also saw 2 foxes on the drive in. I spend a good deal of time stalking fence lizards, side-blotched lizards, and CA whiptails among the rocks and chapparral. No success yet in catching a whiptail, but we did see one pluck a dragonfly out of the sky. At one point, I was stalking a fence lizard when it started to run. A medium-sized whipsnake flashed like lightning out of the brush. I was taken so off guard that it took a moment to gain my composure and grab for the snake. Alas, I almost had it, but I need to remember to LEAD the snake! They are simply too fast during hot weather like that.

I’ve done other stuff too. Like camping up in the high Sierras, and finding snakes in the Desolation Wilderness:

Mountain garter snake, Thamnophis elegans, 8,500 ft. Found next to the snow.

I also found the same species on the coast in Carmel Bay:

While in the Sierras, I also found a black bear and 2 rubber boas at 6,000 ft while night driving. The cool thing was, I purposely set out to find 1) a black bear and 2) a rubber boa. When I drove the road in the daytime, I knew it looked good for boas, but I didn’t really expect to find both of my target species! LOL. I actually saw the black bear twice, once on each pass. It was on a steep, rocky, wooded south-facing slope of a canyon. The road was the easiest route around there.

What else have I done… hmmmm, I have so much catching up to do….

I went to soCal to visit Lyndsay and Andy. Unexpectedly saw Brett, Ian, Francis, Cody, Chris, Rezza, and Alex as well. We went to the San Diego zoo, the Scripps aquarium, Torrey Pines State Park, the Del Mar racetracks, and Pacific beach. I went spearfishing with Andy and his brothers on a jetty, but came up with piddleysquat (that’s the word of the day). That trip was wicked awesome but I’m too lazy to write much more – except I was glad to see such good friends!

Sorry I didn’t post more pics but I’m lazy.

Well, now I’m off to the big island of Hawaii for 3 months. I’ll be back in mid-November. I will be volunteering with the National Park Service’s Hawksbill Turtle Recovery Project. I will live in the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park at 4,000 ft elevation in a rainforest. I’m not too far from the summit of the volcano at 13,000 feet, or the hot lava that is slowly spilling into the sea, expanding the island every day. At least 2/3 of my time backpacking and camping on remote beaches. I will stay up into the early hours of morning keeping watch for endangered female hawksbills that come ashore to lay their eggs. I will be responsible for controlling feral predators, monitoring nest sites, tagging turtles, etc. Many of the locations are in barren lava desert. I can’t wait!

I really hope I will get some good diving in. The west coast of the big island is sheltered from the swell and trade winds, and offers calm diving conditions year round. Better yet, the young volcanic island has deep water very close to shore, and it is not uncommon to spot manta rays, whale sharks, spinner dolphins, pilot whales, and other bluewater species close to land. I’m crossing my fingers that I will get to go free-diving with some of the locals and encounter oceanic whitetip sharks, galapagos sharks, tiger sharks, spinner dolphins, mantas, silky sharks, mahi-mahi, yellowfin tuna, and marlin… the predators of the ocean!!!! But finding enough free time to cross the big island with no car to reach the best dive sites might be difficult.

I feel great knowing that my hard work will help save an endangered sea turtle – a creature as ancient as the dinosaurs. I can no longer simply stand by and watch mankind destroy the planet. I’m ready to do my part, to save one little piece of the giant puzzle.

It will probably be difficult for me to maintain this journal while I’m gone, but I’ll do my best. Well, till next time… Aloha!

Anyway, I have seen so much wildlife and travelled so far in the last couple weeks I don’t know where to begin. Well, let’s start in chronological order, shall we?

First, a couple random snakes that we found during finals week. I found this yellow-bellied racer crossing the bike path at UCSC during finals week so I re-created this “in situ” shot:

Mitch, Karla and I went driving and produced this Cal king:

After partying with my buddies at the final graduation party (which was a blast), Lyndsay and I woke up at 5:30, groggy as hell, and drove to Oakland. We then flew up to Seattle with Dad, Grandma and Poppy and drove to the marine by the San Juan Islands. We chartered a sailboat for a few days and sailed over to Orcas island in chilly Puget Sound.

Over the next couple of days, we sailed, hiked, ate, and drank. Our little boat, “Movin’ On,” was a comfortable cruiser fully furnished with anything you could want – except a frying pan. The San Juan Islands are beautiful – covered with coniferous forest. The weather was very nice and mild – sunny, high 60’s during the day and low 50’s at night. I was there on my 22nd birthday (June 21). I loved how it stayed light outside until close to 10 o’clock.

The day before my birthday, Lyndsay, Dad, and I hiked up Mt. Constitution – at 2,200 feet, I think it is the tallest mountain in the San Juans. Along the way, I saw a bald eagle land in a tree right above me. (Over the course of the trip, I saw about a dozen eagles soaring or tending to their nests, often being mobbed by crows). We kinda took the long way, but after a few hours we reached the summit. The views were spectactular!

Lyndsay and I on Mt. Constitution…

View from the summit…

Lyndsay being silly, grubbin’ on that chicken

Found this dying garter snake on the way up, and saw another alive one just like it. I believe it is the Northwestern garter snake:

More silliness, straight from the source:

All my life I have loved killer whales, since the moment I saw a picture of one when I was four years old. By the time I was 8 or 9, I knew almost everything there was to know. I read Eric Hoyt’s book “A Whale called Killer” over and over again, learning about the pods of resident salmon-eating orcas off Vancouver Island. Those orcas are the same population as those found in the San Juans, so it was no suprise that I wanted to see some orcas!

We went out to the west side of San Juan island in the Movin’ On in search of orcas, which mainly hang out in the deep water there, herding salmon. However, by the time we got there we had to turn back. So next time we took a whale-watching boat and found a widely scattered pod foraging. What a treat to hear the puff of breath and see a 6 foot jet black fin slicing through the glassy seas! For the most part the orcas stayed over 100 yards from the boat, and if they got much closer, the captain moved out of their way as required by law. Finally they grouped up in a tight cluster and sped off towards Vancouver Island, lobtailing and breaching as they met up. That was a great birthday present from Mother Nature!

I have a couple pictures, but since the whales are so distant they aren’t worth the effort to post.

Our flight from Seattle left at 7:30, and we arrived in Oakland by 9:30. The whole country was blistering hot, especially the central valley, so Lyndsay and I sped off to meet up with Mike and Louise for some east bay night driving. I have NEVER seen so many rodents crossing the road! I must have seen about 200 mice and kangaroo rats. We also found 3 live rattlesnakes (1 DOR), a dying gopher snake, and a CA kingsnake. I also saw 3 great horned owls, which I LOVE, and my first badger. What a treat!

I held onto the Cal king for 24 hours to take some pictures in daylight:

My buddy Ryan Kriegbaum and his girlfriend Kaitlyn (sp?) visited for the next couple days. We bought inflatable $15 rafts from Long’s and rafted down the San Lorenzo river at Gavin’s suggestion. That was…. amusing. Let’s just see you shouldn’t push the weight limit on those things when heading down the white water rapids. LOL.

Whew. That was a lot of writing. Now we are up to yesterday.

Mitch and I decided to go night driving south of Big Sur on a particular road that he had herped many times before and I had independently discovered by looking at a trail map. Getting there required driving through thick coastal fog for 2 hours. It was really bad in some stretches. Highway 1 through Big Sur is very scenic – except when you can only see 50 feet in any direction. But our night driving road goes inland and UP, and it didn’t take very long before the fog burned off and the temps jumped up 10 or 15 degrees. On our first pass, we saw no snakes, but the next pass turned up this little bugger:

I nearly had a heart attack when a bobcat jumped off the road cut right in front of my car and I had to slam the breaks to avoid hitting him. Don’t ever do that again, you stupid bobcat!

A few minutes later, we spotted another snake on the road. At first I thought it was another gopher, but it turned out to be something a little more special:

A freaking LONGNOSE snake!!! They have never been recorded from this close to the coast before. What a great find! This guy will be donated to the museum of vertebrate zoology to document this new knowledge.

Mitch and I were riding in seperate cars, and I was following a hundred yards behind. I wish I had been closer because Mitch stopped to tell me he just saw a mountain lion run across the road!

We drove for a while longer and found this beautiful baby California kingsnake:

Before I went to bed, I saw two wild boars and a gray fox, but no more snakes. Mitch drove home, but since it was past midnight I was too tired to drive all the way back to Santa Cruz. Of course I came prepared to camp, and propped up my cot next to my car on the side of the road about a mile from where the mountain lion was sighted. Let’s just say I slept with my snake hook and knife close at hand!

Well I didn’t get eaten by a mountain lion – instead, I fell prey to mosquitoes as soon as the sun rose. By 7:30 the mosquitos were giving me no peace so I drove several miles up Cone Peak road for a nice morning hike. However, at one point I could go no further – I would just burn rubber trying to get past the sandy dips and rocks in the rough road. So I got out and hiked it. It was about a 1,500 foot climb in 3 miles to reach the summit. I hiked it in record speed, scarcely stopping for food or drink until I was near the top.

I really love this area of the Ventana wilderness. The plant life is incredibly diverse between microclimates. The south and the east slopes are drier than the north and west slopes, the ocean is close, and the elevation gradient is very steep. You go from sea level to 5,000′ in just three miles from the coast. This creates a lot of diversity in a relatively small area. One can hike from damp, cool redwoods to oakland to grassland to pine/fir forest to manzanita and hot, dry chapparral in an hour. Near the peak, there were all sorts of plants and colorful flowers, which in turn attracted a buzzing swarm of butterflies, bees, and countless other insects. Some of the butterflies would do a mating/territorial dance, rapidly spiraling up in the air in unison then doing a graceful nosedive towards the ground. Lizards jumped from rock to rock while rabbits and squirrels scurried in the brush. I felt that the mountain was breathing life, there was so much to look at!

Here is a cool counter-clockwise cyclone in the fog:

There were lots of western fence lizards running around in the morning. Here is one of the two that I actually got my hands on.

Here is a sagebrush lizard sitting on the very rock I found it on at the very tip top of the mountain. This is my favorite shot from the trip!

At around 11 o’clock it started to get pretty hot. Since I had drank 3/4 of my water already, I decided to leave the wonderful summit and head down the mountain. Suddenly, there were whiptails everywhere! I saw about 30 of them heading down the mountain, but I had only seen 2 on the way up. I need to come back to this spot with a lizard noose, that’s for sure! They are stunning yellow with black leopard print, and they are ridiculously fast and agile. Here is a crappy picture of a baby one.

PHEW… I think I covered everything… that’s all for now folks!

First find of the night: a 3′ gopher snake that I spotted on the shoulder at at twilight.

That gopher snake was shortly followed by another about 15 minutes later:

What’s that hopping across the road? I don’t think it’s a mouse… it’s a western toad!

Next up was a night snake, a lifer for me!!!

Then we met up with Dave (eastbayherper), who had found this beauty behind us:

By this point I think it was about 9:30-10:00. We drove to a new road where the air was warm (high 70’s), the wind was gentle, and there were dead gopher snakes all over. I slammed the brakes when I soon spotted this awesome subadult cal king on the shoulder. They are almost impossible to miss!!!

Just a minute or two after releasing the cal king, we found this very lethargic gopher snake on the road:

Just down the road from the second gopher snake was a DOR longnose, a “lifer” for me.

Luckily, Dave spotted this young northern pacific rattlesnake, a lifer for Louise:

Wow, that short stretch of road sure was productive!

Things slowed down for a while, probably because the temps were cooling off. Around 11:30, I straddled what everyone thought was a twig, but turned out to be another night snake – at the same spot where we found the first one!

And finally, a baby Cal king to finish the night:

TOTALS:

8 gopher snakes (3 AOR, 5 DOR)
2 NorPac rattlesnakes (1 AOR, 1 DOR)
1 long-nose snake ( DOR)
3 cal kings (AOR)
2 night snakes (AOR)
1 Western Toad (AOR)

Nine live snakes, not bad, not bad!

Thanks for looking!!!

Andy

I saw so many lifers in the Mojave it is ridiculous: desert iguanas, Mojave fringe-toed lizards, chuckwallas, long-nose leopard lizards, a desert horned lizard, a great basin collared lizard, CA whiptails, zebra-tailed lizards (damn they are fast), and five mojave rattlesnakes. Also saw bats, nighthawks, jackrabbits, kangaroo rats, and a scorpion. This was my first time “lizard fishing” with a noose and it is incredibly fun. Almost as fun as spearfishing! Zebra tails were the hardest to catch but I succeeded with the help of some friends. I never succeeded in catching a whiptail though. Night driving was very slow.

I also went on a trip with Mitch, Karla and Cathy to the central Sierras near Yosemite on May 1st. We found eight mtn kingsnakes, several gopher snakes, a whipsnake, and 32 (!!!!!) rattlesnakes. Most of the rattlesnakes were at a den at 5,000 feet. The den was a HUGE east-facing boulder, oh, maybe 25 feet tall by 60 feet wide, with a large crack running through it. Wedged in the crack were rattlesnakes of all shapes and sizes. We went up there at the end of the day and the rattlers were still a little chilly. I tried pulling some out with my hook but they just wedged themselves tight, rattled, and wouldn’t budge an inch. What an experience! On the way out we all stepped over a tiny baby that was coiled up and motionless before Mitch turned around and saw it. The lesson of the day: Don’t wear flip flops to rattler dens!!!! (Don’t worry, I wore boots).

Oh, I also saw my first coast horned lizards in the Santa Cruz mountains a week or two ago – INCREDIBLE animals. Kudos to Lyndsay for spotting the one I stepped over. Yesterday I was fortunate enough to flip a board with Mitch and see vibrant red, black and white bands.

I went up to a spot near the summit with Justin the last week – we found 15 yellow bellied racers, a couple ringnecks, 3 baby rubber boas, 3 gopher snakes, a pissed off northern pacific rattlesnake, and a scorpion. We flipped the rattler under an old sign by the side of the road as daylight was fading. I left my camera in the car, so Justin held the board and the hook while I went to grab my camera. Suddenly I heard cursing, rattling, and the sound of breaking vegetation. I ran back and grabbed the hook. Two minutes later, with Justin’s help I finally succeeded at moving the little bugger out by the side of the dirt road for photos. As I use my tripod and remote control to get some close-up shots, the Contra Costa county sherriff rolled up. ‘This will be interesting,’ I thought.

The tinted window rolled down. The blank, bewildered look on his moustached face was classic. He looked like he had just seen someone do something very, very idiotic, like skateboarding on a freeway.

“What are you doing?”
“Taking some pictures. Don’t worry, we’re a safe distance away.”
“Don’t get bit.”
“Don’t worry, we’re not dumb.”
Some awkward silence. “Don’t get bit.”
He watched us photo the snake for another 20 seconds before saying “Don’t get bit” one last time and slowly driving away.

Well, all the decent pictures (except the ones from the last few days) have been posted in the photo gallery. I’m really to lazy to post dozens of pictures right now, it is too much work, and I have to go pick up my girlfriend. Later!!!