To the Sierras, a few hours in the park with friends complements of free parks week

And then down into the foothills and valley for some herping.  A few young gopher snakes on the road and a couple kingsnakes under Roadside junk.

 Bullfrogs were hopping into roadside ditches as I passed in my car.  I saw the movement and decided to fish one out for a photo... He was about as photogenic as a pile of snot.  I assume he was playing dead.

 Black widows were everywhere... this big girl was inside the lid of our BBQ... too close for comfort.

Good Herping!



And to a different place entirely. Los Padres National Forest in Monterey County.

I was hiking along a fire-road/trail along a steep canyon admiring the prolific abundance of chaparral wildflowers when a bulldozer and some work trucks came up the road behind me.  So I jogged ahead and up a grassy berm on the cliff-side of the road. 

Stepping up the berm, a striped racer (Masticophis lateralis), head raised high, looked at me eye to eye, turned around and literally FLEW of the near-vertical cliff, faster than I could even comprehend what I was seeing.   Could have been a lifer, but I neither laid hand on nor photo'd the snake.  Still, I was excited by the experience, it was only 10 in the morning… it was a good sign of things to come.

The temps were in the high 60's and there was scattered to heavy cloud cover, which made the day Hot and Humid, with the sun still poking through onto the occasional talus pile or boulder filled meadow… perfect snake weather.

Still, i flipped all morning and came up with nada.  I was hoping to flip the ever elusive Coastal zonata, If I hand't found one last year, I'd think they were made up.

Scelops and Uta were prolific

by 11:30 it was getting very warm, but the clouds were getting heavier making it feel downright, tropical.
Headed to a small lake with a rocky, southeasterly shore with lots of cattails.  I hadn't taken two steps when a HUGE lateralis shot across the path and into the reeds.
"Ah, Shit, missed another one" I watched it for a second as it disappeared.  Turned to keep walking  and a second snake shot across the path like a black lightning bolt…  no chance of a photo.
 "OH…. IT"S ON NOW!"   I thought.

I took out my long, collapsable tongs and began stalking up and down a hundred foot section of the trail, attempting to nab one from the reeds  or trail as they appeared and disappeared everywhere around me.  If I stood quietly.  I could hear them moving in the reeds, the place was boiling with racers.    I ended up counting 18 in total.  Some of those were bound to be the same snakes I had already seen but that is still a HUGE number of striped racers.
   There were a few chases and some sparring between tong and snake, a few hastily executed snapshots... a lot of sitting in one place and waiting, and observing.

The snakes stopped moving for a while between 1 and 2pm when the clouds broke and the sun started to really beat down. 
But then the lizards came out.  Utas and Scelops and some Elgaris and something I had never seen before… LOTS of em… more of them than of any other species, big ones and small ones… all of them very fast… too fast for me... even armed with a butterfly net, they were just too skilled at evading a big slow mammal like myself.  Busted out the telephoto lens and captured them that way instead.
California Whiptail...

This explained the large amounts of Racers that I was seeing... abundant food. 


This guy was hanging out with me too.  Biggest and darkest Bullfrog I have ever seen. His head was about the size of my fist.  He didn't move for 3 hours while I hunted snakes along the bank… I began to think it was fake.

While I was taking pictures of the frog, I saw A Fish and Game official walking towards me along the path.  I declared an initial,  "Howdy!"

To which he replied with an official,  "Fish and Game. Good Afternoon."
He asked me what I was doing and I told him I was photographing reptiles and amphibians and immediately alerted him that I was carrying the snake tongs and held them up for him to see (I did not want him to think I had a firearm).

"Reptiles huh?  .... do you have a fishing license?"

I told him that I did  have a license and that it was in my pack about 20 feet down the trail behind him. He asked me if I had been collecting and if I had animals in the bag to, which I answered "No.".... I wasn't collecting  We walked to where my pack was sitting and I displayed my permit to the ranger.
He explained that I needed it in order to photo or collect reptiles and I told him that is why I had bought the license and that I understood why I needed it. 
He took a look at my license and said that I was "All set to collect reptiles and amphibians if I wanted.."  (fishing and hunting is allowed within National Forest Land as long as you have the appropriate permit.  Reptiles and Amphibians are regulated under fishing permits by the state of California)

We talked for a few minutes about what I had seen that day and he asked if I'd seen any rattlesnakes, to which I replied "No." And I asked him about what he had seen in the area.  He was a younger man, about my age, and I felt this eased our interaction.
A positive interaction between a herper and fish and game.  He was doing his job by making sure I wasn't poaching and I was actually glad that he had talked to me because I was hiking alone and this meant that an official new I was there.  He parted with, "good afternoons" and i went back to what I had been doing...

Movement... It is real!

I waited until the sun retreated behind the clouds again and the snakes started to reappear, heading back uphill from the reeds and into safety of rocky cover. 

Racers are extremely alert animals.  They move with their heads high off the ground, and raise their heads further when inspecting threat or prey.  I watched as a pair chased each other over the tops of the reeds.  The first disappeared back into the underbrush.  The second snake stopped to look at me, carefully following the movement of my tongs, constantly turning its head to keep its gaze fixed on the strange threat.  He easily eluded my attempts to catch him and followed his companion into the undergrowth. 

In the end, the only real capture was made by cutting off downhill escape and diving on the snake.

And again, off to somewhere else entirely.

The Sandhills region of the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Two small snakes of a species I have never seen despite their apparent abundance.  Sharptailed snake. Contia sp..  LIFER

A big green C. oreganus.  A very impressive snake and an interesting "patternless" green. Eat your heart out "mojave green".

And off again a bit north into San Mateo to meet up with Zach Lim in search of the ever elusive L. zonata.

Zach was excited when I flipped this little guy.  He'd been looking for one all season.

And under the same board we found these two... this first one is a LIFER

 Santa Cruz Garter
And this big girl didn't budge an inch... I think she is the same one I found there
last june.

This spot has produced a mountain king snake, rattlesnakes, ringnecks, a yellow bellied racer and now a Santa Cruz Garter Snake.  A very productive spot.



And home again... 4 lifers and over 25 snakes in 2 days... good stuff.  I always have good herping the weekend before my birthday.