Ok now came spring and I actually became a real herper. I made constant finds of new species for me and searched in many new areas. Too many things to say, so I will just post the photos. The big highlights were my first rattlesnakes (7 total by the time i'm writing this) and Northern Rubber Boas!!

Western Skink (Marin County)

Pacific Gopher Snakes (Marin County)

Pacific Ringneck Snake (Marin County)

Northern Pacific Rattlesnakes! (Marin County)

Sharp-Tailed Snakes (Marin County)

California Alligator Lizard (San Francisco)

Coastal Garter Snake (San Francisco)

California King Snakes (Santa Clara County)

Northern Pacific Rattlesnake (Santa Clara County)

Coastal Garter Snake (San Mateo County)

Baby Northern Rubber Boa! (San Mateo County)

Coastal Garter Snakes (San Mateo County)

Northern Rubber Boa! (San Mateo County)

Western Yellow Bellied Racer! (San Mateo County)

Ok so starting the Spring of 2012, I have begun to learn how to really herp. I read a lot more about how to find snakes and have done lots of research. Consequently, I have started finding tons of snakes and other cool species. While I have been herping more, others things have also taken time in my schedule so I have really disregarded this blog. I seem to have no time to update it and write everything I want to right.

However I still really want to keep this thing up, so it will now become a place where I just post a bunch of pictures of the herps that I find, but there will not be much writing. So here we go. Since I have not posted in about a year, I need to start with my trip to Wassaw Island in Georgia to work on a Sea Turtle Project. Only herps were of course Sea Turtles, tons of alligators (babies!) and then just a couple lizards, frogs and a black racer that was way to fast for me to catch. I only saw the tail end of it scurrying beneath my feet.

Herping died down after that summer mainly because school started and the cold weather set in. But we did make a trip to central Florida around Christmas and saw some alligators (no photos taken). We tried some road cruising in a popular area but a cold front moved in and finding anything was unlikely. But my favorite find of that trip was actually a sign. 

I now know where i'm going once the weather gets better for snakes!

2012 stated off with some California Newts found in Marin County

Finally a Horned Lizard

On Saturday, I went up to Ford Ord to visit with my cousins, aunt and uncle. The plan was to do some mountain biking with my cousins (Will and Aaron) around the Fort Ord area where I had competed in a biking race earlier this year. As we cruised down one of the trails, Aaron called me back to check out a lizard he had found. Sure enough, it was a Coast Horned Lizard! (A.K.A Horney Toad) I had been searching for these lizards a long time but had nothing to show for it. I even spent a lot of the South West Road Trip looking for them, but still came up empty handed. Then I finally end up seeing one very close to home! There was a video taken but the lizard is small and hard to see unless the video is enlarged, but when enlarged, the quality greatly diminishes. So here is a photo: Feel free to click the photo for a larger view!

A Sad Find

This thursday, my brother and I went climbing in Mt. Diablo State Park. As we drove up a skinny road to the climbs, my brother noticed a snake on the road. We pulled over and ran to see what it was. Unfortunately the snake was dead but very intact and it was a beautiful Gopher Snake (A.K.A. Bull Snake). Lately it seems like for every live snake I find, there are two dead ones, but I guess that is part of herping on roads.

From Climbing to Herps

On 4th of July weekend, my family decided to take a day trip to Pinnacles National Monument so that my brother and I could do some climbing. In order to find the climbs, we had to do quite a bit of hiking and scrambling around this beautiful landscape and this caused us to stumble upon some cool herps.

I was incredibly excited when we found 4 snakes on this trip!!! Unfortunately they were all the same specie and they were just common garter snakes but still some awesome finds.

3 of them were seen swimming in a reservoir near the climbing

This photo actually shows two snakes. One is very young and small near the right side of the photo

Along with the snakes, we discovered many lizards including this whiptail: