Our last post defined what herpetology and herping is, and I did this purposely to lead into today’s post, which tells the tale of a recent herping trip. This herping trip was unique; I hadn’t ever experienced such series of events. Read forward…
We left town at 7PM, which has always been my preferred time to leave for a night-time herping excursion. The conditions were all right; clear skies, little-to-no wind, perhaps some clouds in the distance, humidity wasn’t too high or low.
Sounds great, right?
Wrong
Percent moon illumination was something like 92%, and if you know anything about herping, your chances of encounters lower substantially with a full moon. In school, I performed a research project attempting to define the limiting capabilities of a higher moon illumination. I separated the percent moon illumination into 3 equal sections, defined as full moon, mid moon, and new moon (I won’t go into specifics here). I encountered zero snake species during the full moon category, and I encountered about 25% during mid-moon phase. This means that about 75% of my encounters were during that of a new moon category. What is the reasoning for this? I can’t say. It’s well known that rodent species are less active during higher moon illumination to prevent being preyed upon by light-driven predators, AKA owls. So do snakes not come out during high illumination because their prey is less active, because they’re prey, or both? Or neither? I digress…
With all of that said, my hopes were low so as to see any snakes, but I had high hopes for a variety of toads. I’ve seen many different toad species on this road, and so I was hoping to get some good pictures of different species.
We drove quite a distance, roughly 40 miles, without seeing anything other than a few dead Sonoran desert toads.
Driving through the darkness, something caught our attention – I thought it was just a rock in the road. Vehicle in reverse, we sped backwards to look.
There, in the middle of the road, was the smallest, tiniest, little cottontail rabbit I’d ever seen. This thing was about the size of a baseball, and maybe even a little smaller. I had to snap some photos.
“There’s a snake!” my friend yelled, but I didn’t pay attention, as I thought he was kidding.
Sure enough, 15 feet from this little cottontail, was a coiled western diamondback rattlesnake.
I start taking pictures of the snake as the rabbit scared in the snake’s direction, though not directly to it. The rabbit joined a relative, a brother or sister perhaps, and they both scampered into an over-hanging tree. This snake was surely waiting for one of these rabbits to make a mistake, and it was only a matter of time.
We decided to circle around the tree that the rabbits went beneath, now roughly 20 feet from the diamondback. I begin taking more pictures of these adorable little creatures.
“Is that another snake?!”
Sure enough, deep from within the tree, laid a larger Mohave rattlesnake, this snake only about 15 feet from the other snake. We couldn’t believe it. We had never seen 2 snakes in such close proximity, and especially of different species.
We circled the tree again to try to get closer to the Mohave. While doing this, one of the cottontails thought it was pretty slick, and was “hidden” from us as we walked to within 2 or 3 feet of it.
We got closer to the Mohave and observed its beauty. This snake in particular was bright green with yellow highlights, and shined through my camera lens.
We took a ton of pictures and decided to leave the group of animals alone. It wouldn’t surprise me if one or both of the rabbits got eaten that night, but I guess we will never know.
Our night concluded relatively uneventfully. We ended up seeing many tarantulas, and finally a live Sonoran desert toad. We were headed back after many miles covered, until…
“DID YOU JUST SEE THAT?!”
We flipped the car around and approached a snake-looking creature, except it was facing parallel with the road, and there’s only 1 snake that faces parallel with the road, rather than perpendicular.
It was a sidewinder, and it was freshly dead upon the road. This would make around the 6th dead sidewinder I’d seen on this road, but never a live one. I was bummed, but perhaps one day…