Field notes, v1308
Page 179
Image from the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Contributed by Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley. | www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Transcription
Greer, H. 1992 May 16 (continued) Dave & Fred ~1/week ago. Sunny and warm, seeming like summer because Arizona has had an unusually high amount of spring rain. At 0840h as we searched for a C. willardi in a side ravine, an adult ♂ Gyalopis lepidus rattled continuously from short grass at Dave's feet. I handled the snake, which felt light and had an empty gut. Soon after, we localized the large ♂ C. willardi to a spot on a terrace above the ravine bottom, ~1m from a hole next to a small tree. Fred had seen a snake of the same size at this site last year. At 0920h we spotted the radiotagged ♀ C. willardi coiled in the small rubble of the same ravine; she retreated beneath a small rock as we approached and never rattled. At 0932 as I walked over a ridge to the next ravine I saw a large, bright coppery band Elgaria kingii basking in dappled sun on a Nestoma stick nest built against a log - it retreated into the nest as I approached. At 1006h Fred caught a large smelly Thamnophis cyrtopsis basking on boulder rubble at the base of the dam that forms the edge of a large stock pond - the snake felt gravid some. At 1020h as we drove out a subadult (~75cm) Pituophis melanoleucus appeared stretched, stiffly kinked anteriorly, and immobile in the dirt road; it did not hiss or strike. E. side of Patagonia Mtns., Santa Cruz Co., Arizona We arrived here ~3 mom to check out a talus slope