Tag Archives: sonoran desert

Animal, Arizona, Habitat, Reptile, Snake

Sonoran Desert Reptile Hike March 2015

sonoran desertI had the chance along with my best bud to get out on a hike to enjoy nature and to look for reptiles. As were driving to our hiking spot, we each made guesses as to what we would find on our hike. We made a first and a second guess. I chose a patchnose snake as my first guess. I have routinely found them on spring hikes in the sonoran desert, so I thought this would be a good choice. For my second guess, I got a little braver and chose a speckled rattlesnake. My friend chose a ground snake and a black headed snake.

We ended up finding a patchnose snake as our first snake, so I won! Woohoo! I tried to take a photo of it, but it slithered away before I could get a good shot. If you look closely, though, you can see it in the photo:
Patch-nose snake

We saw several other lizards, of course. There were at least some variety of whiptail lizards as well as plently of zebra tailed lizards. The only other snake that we found was this diamondback rattlesnake, who was fully active in the middle of the sandy wash:
western diamondback rattlesnake

Here is a short video of the 9.5 mile 5 hour hike:

And finally, here are a few more photos of the area where we hiked and the hike itself:

yellow desert poppies

cactus with flowers

desert canyon

dead saguaro in desert

Animal, Arizona, Habitat, Insect, Reptile, Snake, State

Central Arizona February 2015 Hike, Patch Nosed Snake

sonoran desert
I went on a short 3 mile hike with my daughter and neice today. The weather is very nice this time of year, in mid February. Temperatures were in the low 80’s today. At this time of year reptiles are once again active on the warm days like today. We hiked up the trail and found this beautiful patch nosed snake on the side of the trail, the front half of its body was hidden under a rock, but the rest of it was right out in the open and easy to see, and to grab.

Patch nose snake

At the top of this particular mountain there are some areas with some small caves and I noticed this odd shaped thing protruding from one of the small holes in the side of the rocks. At first, I thought it was some sort of mushroom. I thought that maybe there was a small amount of seepage and that it was causing this large fungus to grow in the rock. When we got closer, though, I discovered that it was really a wild bee hive. I believe that bees in the area have all been africanized. I swell up when I get stung by bees, so I try to stay clear of them as much as possible. Here is a quick video of the bee hive: