Herps of the Mojave: Redondo Dos

First one more snake. A speckled rattlesnake, Crotalus mitchelli. I didn't get a single half decent image of it but Christian did. A couple of pictures when it was on the hook. This was a lifer for both of us and was actually one of the species on my 2012 Wish List.




A commenter on Flickr, who has a lot of great herp and desert shots himself, suggested that we should be careful with gravid females, which I totally agree with. This might have been a gravid female, but I am not sure. It certainly looks plump in the mid-section in this image, but we did not handle it enough to determine sex, let alone whether it was gravid. When we were looking at the snake in live time, I don't remember thinking it was gravid, but it is certainly possible we over-looked this in our excitement, and now I am starting to convince myself that this is sounding a little familiar. However, we simply moved it to a safer spot where it quickly disappeared into the rocks. What do you guys think in regards to it being gravid?

Another King of the Rocks, who will also disappear into the cracks when you try and sneak up on him. Otherwise he is macho and likes to do push-ups for all of the other chucks to see. Look at those biceps.




And a few pictures of a juvenile chuckwalla, the guy above was not the dad though, their ranges are not that large. The baby was found several miles down the road. My first baby Chuck.






Finally, the only desert tortoise of the trip, but this was the third year in a row we have seen one of these majestic critters. There really is no better way to start your day than stumbling upon a desert tortoise in the early morning light. This one was crossing an old dirt road.










She didn't need any help across the road. Made it across just fine herself, thank you very much.





We did pull the cholla needle out of her eye for her though.

Photo Credits: First 5 photos and last 2 by Christian. Remaining by JK.
As always, but it bears repeating, no animals were collected on our trip.

Desert Tortoises

I have posted Desert Trip photos about as fast as the desert tortoise crosses the road, probably even slower.

RandomTruth did a great run-down of the species we saw and shared some great pictures, so be sure to check his post out.  I also recommend checking out his Flickr account linked in the post for some awesome flower pictures.  It was such a treat to have a botanist on the trip with us to tell us what each of the 70+ flowers we saw were. In the past we were confined to "That's a pretty flower." "Have we seen this one yet? It is pretty." Randomtruth taught us herpers a lot about the flora of the Mojave.

Speaking of crossing the road, that is the only time you should ever touch a desert tortoise.  If you find a tortoise on the road, you should pick it up lifting it no more than 6" off the ground, still very upright and move it 50 feet or so off of the road and make sure it keeps heading away from the road.  It is important to do it in this manner so that the tortoise does not expel is bladder in defense and lose all that precious water. This is the only time you are legally allowed to touch these guys and CTC strongly recommends following this law.  On our 2011 trip, we found three different tortoises.  One male, one female, and one sex undetermined.  See, unless they are pretty big it is tough to tell sex without looking at the bottom of the shell or carapace which is slightly more concave in males.  They notch between the anal scutes may also have a different angle if you know what you are looking for.  But since we cannot look at the ventral carapace of desert tortoises because we cannot pick them up the only thing we can really determine sex with is tail length.  Males have a longer tail as it has to house their hemipene.

Here are a the three tortoises we found in the Eastern Mojave.

Moving across the road all on his own

Off the road and still moving faster than I can post

Found a good hiding spot

Creosote flowers on the lips

What a backdrop for this sweet gal. Can you guess where we found her?

I did not have a blog during the time of our 2010 trip so I will include pictures of the three tortoises we found in 2010.  In 2010 we found one male that had to be moved off of the road, a huge female almost right in our camp and a very small yearling.  The yearling was spotted from the car in the side of a bank as we drove in reverse because we had hit an impassable section of road with no turn around point.  Talk about some good bizarre luck!.

Male after moving it off the road.  First wild desert tortoise for me.

Female roaming near camp.

Big Female hiding in the creosote a few hours before the above picture above was taken

Yearling hiding from the monkeys

Yearling near hide spot

Shell close-up

If you want to familiarize yourself better with tortoise anatomy I recommend the aptly names Anatomy of a Tortoise, by J. Stuart Thomson.  I got this book about 3 months ago from the publisher, but it looks like it has gone out of print and now costs $64-222!.  Maybe the library or peruse my copy if you are in my neck of the woods?