9-9-15

Trip Details

Location: Near Loreto, Baja California Sur, Mexico

Herpers: Shawn Vought, Jason Nelson, Joe Ehrenberger, Matt Cage, Mike Pingleton, Jim Scharosch

Account by: Jim Scharosch

Photos by: Jim Scharosch

After taking care of photos in the morning, we spent the afternoon driving north to an area where the main highway offered views of the Sea of Cortez and the rock slides along the road were made of volcanic rock.

We were looking for lizards, especially the endemic collared lizard. It was already very hot and the lizards were pretty wary. My camera is not really set up for long distance lizard photography so I mostly wandered around and watched the lizards scamper away. The only photo I got was this Peninsular Chuckwalla (Sauromalus australis) shot taken from the car window.

Back in Loreto after our lizard search and we didn’t have a lot of down time. We grabbed dinner and got out on the roads to cruise. Mike and I had a bit of a slow night. We found a couple of juvenile red diamond rattlesnakes and one baja california rattlesnake which we did not photograph.

We also found a couple of Lyre Snakes (Trimorphodon biscutatus)

The other cars did much better. They ended up with a couple of juvenile Mexican Rosy Boas (Lichanura trivigata)

I didn't ever get tired of seeing these boas. They are so cool.

A beautiful adult Speckled Rattlesnake (Crotalus mitchelii)

I was really glad to get a chance to see an adult speck. This one was right around three feet long. It had a massive rattle string.

They also found this really awesomely colored Slevin’s Nightsnake (Eridiphas slevini).

Matt and Joe really hit it though, finding two adult Baja California Ratsnakes (Bogertophis rosaliae)

I used to keep Trans Pecos Ratsnakes as pets a long time ago, so it was really cool to see these close relatives in the wild. The smaller one on the left was about two and a half feet and the longer one was over three.

A number of other snakes were also found throughout the evening, but most were repeats from previous nights so I lost track of the total.

I grabbed a couple of cactus photos, because, you know, cactus....