Today wasn't as successful, as I wanted it to be... I dont know what I was thinking but I had invited a friend to go road crusing in Starr County for Hognoses and to photograph reticulated collard lizards. The weather was way off... it was or had to be in the low 60's probably high 50's. But I had already invited and figured why not, these guys are normally found during dawn or dusk. So we headed off at 2:00am (and found ourselves in Roma Tx by 3:30am), I figured heck... we'll be here as soon as the sun comes up.
The night was too cold to find anything but a texas toad?
Between 4:00am and 6:00am we road cruised pretty ideal habitat for hognoses, and any other snake... but nothing. A possum here and tons of jack rabbits.
Dawn came upon us.... and we thought postive... the sun should bring out heat seeking snakes...
We where soo wrong... 6:30am brought nothing but a bit of light... so we decided to do some flipping on a nearby public farm road.
Hence our two first finds for the morning:
Blue Spiney (he was soo cold, he couldnt get far)
Sheep Frog (these guys are as common as dirt, the original one I was going to photo was pearl white, gorgeous! But it got away when I tried to photo it)
We cruised and cruised til about 9:30am, we saw a few possible lizards on the road, but the with the sun hitting our eyes, we werent sure. Lots of quail and roadrunners thou... these farm rds. have spots where they place river rocks i guess to help get grip when it rains?... we stop countless times, thinking maybe it was a box turtle or a texas tortoise crossing the roads, only to find a nicely turtle shaped river rock. We gave up around 10:30 when I made the mistake of taken the wrong road, and instead of heading to Falcon Dam, I went to the Mexico/US bridge:
Falcon Dam
Well we had no luck finding any snakes whatsoever... alot of dead pitbulls left around the farm roads (heck if you love your dog, you'd bury it... these guys where just tossed over)
Well, we decided to take break and look around... we used a Garmin 200 to get around most of the area, but a few of the roads werent listed... this is how we came upon this awesome little site. Right off the Rio Grande I think? Water was clear! and Warm! if I had swimming trunks and a towel, i'd be in it.
But we didnt.... we did have rods thou.... nothing
After a hour of fishing we decided to hit up a little bird trail... ugh.. it was literally a trail 50ft long, that went in a circle. I saw some sort of spiny lizard but it was too far to identify.
Can you see this little guy?
My buddy Saul... posing!
After catching nothing... and wasting a few minutes walking around, we decided it had warmed up enough to road cruise and flip again. We headed back out to some farm rds we had visited earlier in the morning.
We had just entered our first farm rd. around 11:00am/11:30am when I saw a cheap piece of plastic on the side of the road, I stopped and told my buddy Saul I was going to check it out.... what luck.
It's not a hognose snake, nor a reticulated collard lizard, but something just as uncommon I think. A Texas Banded Gecko!!
Awesomeness!! Poor little guy didnt know what was going on... I hasseled him for a bit, then placed him back in his little spot. That was our highlight of the trip, we did go down a few more roads, and came upon a dump site. We flipped and flipped, finding whiptails, blue spineys, texas spineys, and a few pack rats. But no snakes, not even a atrox! We couldnt really photo any of the lizards we found, due to the fact the sun was already out, and they seemed like they were fired up already.
We decided to call it a day, and head home... we might try again next week. And see if the weather warms up a bit more at night, and if we stay longer and bare the heat to find some reticulated collards.
On the way back, we saw this badboy... and had to snap pics. I haven seen one in town, so it was nice to scope it out.
Then the following day for reasons unknown I was dead tired... and slept most of the day. When around 6pm or or so our neighbor across the street called us, because he had found a snake. He wanted to kill it, but thought of calling us first before....
So Leah and I cross the street in our "lazy" pajama clothes... and go around the house to the back patio, we find the neighbor's dog barking at something in the corner.... sure enough there's the snake...
an juvenile Indigo....
Excuse my huskyness....
we talked to the neighbor and informed him, it was not dangerous, but a beneficial snake. Didnt seem to get thru to him... he was more concerned of it crawling into his bed or him bumping into it at night... he's an oldschool kinda of guy.... so a good snake is a dead snake. Well, we chatted, and informed him to call us, whenever he had any scaley issues...
We went back to the house, and we showed the little guy off to the cat for a few moments..., bagged him and relocated him to a better area further away from the neighborhood. We did take some better photos, I just havent uploaded them yet... but these are the only two we got up yesterday, before we went to bed.
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