prakrit's Favorites

Say Hello to 'Bubba.' This magnificent, adult, male Mohave ground squirrel (MGS; Xerospermophilus mohavensis) was captured and released near Coso Junction, California, on June 6, 2019. It was a bit late in the year to capture an adult MGS, especially one so obviously well fed, above ground. That is because this species not only hibernates through the winter months, but it estivates through the hottest months of the summer; they hibernate or estivate for ~7 months of the year. Sadly, because of the pandemic, I could not return to my field site in 2020 and it does not look very promising either for 2021.

Found this lil one which I have never seen a color morph like this for a Mud snake. I determined it to be one based off the visual/physical features such as the “tail spine”, pattern, head/eye shape, as well as a divided anal plate.

Trifecta!! Competing in tug-o-war with a common garter snake for adult female cascades frog prey. Amazing rare observation!
Published observation in Herpetological Review as a note:
Garwood, J., and N. Garwood. 2020. Thamnophis sirtalis fitchi (Valley Garter Snake) and Thamnophis atratus hydrophilus (Oregon Aquatic Garter Snake). Foraging Competition. Herpetological Review 51:881-881.

I'm fairly certain that this scorpion is Smeringurus aridus. In appearance, this particular example was noticeably large, being by my approximation slightly larger than most adult male mesaensis I've encountered. When I first discovered this individual, it was extending its pedipalps from a shallow burrow. I carefully excavated the surrounding area and gently removed the scorpion from its burrow to examine in more detail.

The weak scalloping of the fingers very closely resembled illustrations depicting S aridus. There appear to be 26 denticles in the sixth row of the fixed finger. I placed plastic wrap over the scorpion and took the included picture of its genital papillae. It's not quite as pronounced as I would have thought, but appears almost identical to the papillae of the Smeringurus vachoni immanis that I came across later in the night, and have also included a picture of. Although not particularly relevant, I also included a single image of the genital operculum of a Smeringurus mesaensis male just for comparison's sake. If you are not certain which one is which, I watermarked the lower left corner of those images with the species name being depicted.

I was feeling fairly fancy that night and decided to bust out my new-fangled mobile photo studio. If you knew what it was actually made of you'd probably have a good laugh at how ridiculous it is, but it was such a pain in the ass to set up that I took a lot of pictures to offset the effort. I hope you'll excuse me for it, lol. This was the only adult male I found that night, so that is why it received special treatment in particular. Now that I have reviewed the pictures produced from my mobile "photo studio" ($4 home depot drop cloth) and I'm happy with the results, I will now keep it set up in my trunk for future use.

I ended up in this particular area after being swarmed by some kind of cicada-like insect at the original spot. I'm obviously not afraid of bugs, but spending half an hour with hundreds of tiny insects constantly crawling all over my skin took its toll on me, not to mention I couldn't even take any photos because the scorpions were chased off by the horde constantly flying into them. I drove around for a while and took a wrong turn and got lost. I eventually ended up in this location where the aridus was found. I can confirm the location is accurate because because I had used GPS to pin where I parked my Jeep. An interesting fact about this locale in particular is that a majority of the surrounding hills are largely featureless and devoid of vegetation. There are little to no rocks or debris for the scorpions to hide amongst, and so the hillside was littered with active burrows. The soil was very soft, which likely accounted for the high density of these burrows. The visibility was amazing, and I found an absolute treasure-trove of other Smeringurus aridus of different sexes and instars, as well as a few Serradigitus joshuaensis hiding in the cracks and pits in the hillside. It is worth noting that although the initial trail which leads into Smoke Tree Wash can be driven on normally, it quickly becomes a very deeply sandy trail which is traversable only by a 4WD vehicle. It is however relatively close to the trailhead, so I imagine those of us without 4x4 could easily walk to this location. It would have added to the mystique if I had found aridus somewhere deep in the wilderness, but I think it's better this way, don't you think? If you're looking for aridus and found any of the info here to be useful, please leave a comment on this post, I would really appreciate it!

Nature's curveball. Young-of-year in shallow pool with abundant cress. One other normal pigmented CRLF of same size class also present. Species is well documented in the watershed. For a split second, I thought I was in the tropics ;-)

AOR large adult male (black phase alterna morph) on Hwy 118 at the north cut of the Christmas Mountains. GTS 55.

This specimen had only one red scale in the nuchal blotch and a few white flecks, otherwise was completely black. The image is a scan from a printed 35 mm image.

My second encounter with an axanthic morph (lacking of any red/yellow pigmentation). This snake could easily be mistaken for the very similar L. getula, but when taking a closer look you will notice the black face/black nostril of this snake, something unique to L. zonata, whereas L. getula has a white face/white nostril. Spotted this snake not even 5ft off trail. Made for quite the easy handle, after only a few seconds of trying to slither away the snake got quite relaxed, laying still for minutes, allowing me to handle it for about 15 minutes in total before putting it back onto the granite boulder in which it was found. I’d say this was quite the healthy adult. About 2 1/2 to 3 ft in length, and seeming to have recently shed (the dorsal and ventral scales of the snake glistened dramatically in direct sunlight). So blessed to have come across yet another one of these more uncommon morphs for the species here in the Sierra.