Spring is Here and Reptiles are Out

This alligator lizard was not full grown. He hid in the grass for a while before finally giving me an open shot.

Spent Saturday looking for reptiles and I found quite a few. Here are some of my photos.

Western fence lizards were out sunning themselves on the many rock piles.

Here’s a classic fence lizard.

A few snakes were circulating. I found one whipsnake.

This whip snake didn’t want to leave and I took several photos.

The Alameda whipsnake is listed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service as threatened. http://ecos.fws.gov/speciesProfile/profile/speciesProfile.action?spcode=C04A

I finally came upon a large rattle snake.

This guy makes a living eating wood rats.

Here he is again.

Plenty of rattles on this guy. No wood rat too big or too small for him.

The next one is not a reptile, but he posed so nice I couldn’t resist.

He stood in the middle of the road and strutted his stuff, but the hens must have been nesting.

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Reptile Survey Turns up Alameda Whipsnake

I was on my second day of checking for whipsnakes and I’d seen a gazillion fence lizards (mostly on rock piles), four aligator lizards (under our roof material), a rattle snake (a very large one), and two gopher snakes (sunning themselves in roads)

One more check on the way home. It was about 3:00 PM and I figured some of the tins would be too hot, but the ones in parital  sun might be just right. It seemed like I was wrong, as the first seven tins had only one fence lizard, but tin #8 was a bonanza.

Watch this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNldLU1kksc

Here’s a couple photos.

Alameda whipsnake

Off to the left you can see part of a garder snake. Here’s a better picture of the garter snake.

garter snake

It could be that the whipsnake was about to make lunch of the garter snake.

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