Field notes, v1308
Page 137
Image from the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Contributed by Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley. | www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Transcription
Greene, H. 1991 August 6 (continued) The snake spent 3 minutes crawling through a clump of long grass and small shrubs no more than 20x20 cm and spent the rest of the time moving slowly - always tongue-flicking and pushing its head into vegetation. I wonder if it's on the track of a ♀. At 0903 h it has again covered 5 m in 5 minutes, going uphill, and now crawls up over a 0.4 m high shrub and disappears. At 1033 h I find the snake in a tight coil at the base of a 4m juniper, >30m from last site, its head pointed at the base of the juniper trunk (photos). By 1130 h, back at the Hardys', a slow rain is falling. At 1414 h a large Masteriophis bilineatus zips across Cave Creek Rd in front of my truck, ~200 m SW of the turnoff to Paradise. August 12 Returned here after attending the SSAR meeting in Pennsylvania. Arrived ~1615 h. At 1728 h I located Crotalus molossus ♂ #3 ~200 m S of the road, perhaps 400-500 m SE of where I last saw him. The snake was in a tight coil w/ head up in an S-coil, as if hunting - among open grass on cobbles in a small gulch just below the edge of a much larger ravine, a branch of Silver Creek. I took two photos, and as I moved w/in 3m for the second he turned toward me - no rattling. Barry Tonberlin told me that two students from Cal Poly Pomona, last night on Aug 80 in Hidalgo Co., New Mexico, found