Field Herping and Road Cruising Photos

I go out basically every weekend during the warm months so I thought I’d start a thread for people to post field herping and road cruising photos. Please keep this to wild snakes, lizards, and amphibians that you’ve found. Please don’t give specific locations for your finds.

The occasions when you see us with a snake in hand it’s because we were moving it off the road. We don’t feel the need to handle wild snakes more than required.

Last night was pretty productive. First four snakes posted are from last night’s road cruise. Unfortunately we also found 8 Gophers, a Nor Pac, and a Cal King DOR (Dead On Road).

Adult Northern Pacific Rattlesnake

Neonate Northern Pacific Rattlesnake

Adult Male California Kingsnake


Pacific Gopher Snake

Another Pacific Gopher Snake

Adult Male Valley Garter (T. fitchi)

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Great thread topic. Hope i can add a bunch to it.

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I hope you do! We’ve started the season off pretty well for once. The last couple of years my availability was limited and we just didn’t see a lot of snakes when we did go. Road cruising in 2021 we saw as many snakes as we did bigfoot :joy::joy:

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Couple phoners of Northern Pacific Rattlesnakes from last night’s short cruise. The baby was so chill it wasn’t the least bit stressed to ride the hook 20-30 yards back to the truck while I was waiting for a car to pass. I take a lot of extra precautions when I’m out by myself. Not because I’m worried about being bitten, it’s getting hit by a car that I’m a lot more worried about lol. Sadly the first snake of the night was a DOR gravid female Pacific Gopher well over 5ft long.


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Been very busy the last couple weeks but still squeezed in some herping.

Big Northern Pacific

California Kingsnake

Shasta Alligator Lizard



Western Toad

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Slow night but at least we saw a couple Northern Pacifics. I’m never disappointed to see a rattlesnake.



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Beautiful animal you saw, thanks for sharing. I wish i was able to field herp like i did with my brothers and papa growing up.

Im grateful for the memories of all the camping, fishing etc. Exposure at an early age really helped me to appreciate our planets animals.

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Zebra Tailed Lizard


Great Basin Collared Lizard



Long Nosed Leopard Lizard


Yellow Backed Spiny Lizard



Desert Horned Lizard


Great Basin Rattlesnake


Long Nosed Snake

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That long-nosed snake is phenomenal! That’s a new one to me. So much still to learn…

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They’re a favorite of mine. They’re lizard eaters so I haven’t jumped into keeping one yet but one day I definitely will.

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Uploaded some short videos to youtube today. Here’s links to a couple.

https://youtube.com/shorts/BFUuZNNW0pM?feature=share

https://youtube.com/shorts/IBng3dtaQ9c?feature=share

Cal King and a Pacific Gopher from last night


Gopher
https://youtube.com/shorts/Bbvmnd8EXFQ?feature=share

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Did a quick run to the High Desert again this weekend. Productive trip, but nothing like it normally is. The Desert Horned Lizards had just hatched so it awesome to see a couple dozen of them scurrying around. Scorpions were plentiful as expected. Snakes were MIA. Added Great Basin WesternWhiptail to my lifer list but I didn’t get anywhere near photography range of it lol.
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Man, wish I could’ve seen this much on my trip to New Mexico

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