The return to Arizona...

I've been AWOL due to a recent field herping trip. Last month marked 20 years of knowing my best friend. He and his wife recently returned state-side after having finished their post-docs out in South Africa. To celebrate this, among other reasons, my wife and I flew out to southern Arizona for Labor Day Weekend. I haven't edited all the photos due to a new job and 5 corn clutches all deciding to begin hatching the day we left (9/01). But for now, here's a teaser.


MiEu-09-05-2016 by Chris Cirrincione, on Flickr

Beautiful snake and photograph! Looking forward to seeing what else you found.

Wow! What a cool coral snake! Did you just walk up on this sneaky one? Thought they kinda stayed hidden. An awesome find, at any rate!

Thanx for sharing! :crazy02:

Nice! I'm looking forward to seeing more of your herping adventure!

Some more critters, in no particular order other than date.

I have quite the lots of images to still process, but between getting recent hatchlings squared, 1st trial feeds underway (at 27 of 58 hatchlings eating currently), and playing catch-up on regular honey-do list items (cutting the lawn, etc.) I've not had much time to process my images, let alone take photos of the newly hatched corn wormies.

Excuses aside...

My Lifer regalis. I've been on trips where others have found regal ringnecks en route to a common herping destination, but never have I been within the group and/or the one to find it. This guy was decently sized at ~18-20 inches; large enough to take down hatchling snakes within the herping area and fuzzies. I've known others to have found regals approaching 3 ft and having kept and fed them hatchling gopher snakes (pretty decent sized hatchling snakes if you've never seen one) and even young spotted/childrens pythons!


DiRe-9-3-2016 by Chris Cirrincione, on Flickr


DiRe-9-3-2016-2 by Chris Cirrincione, on Flickr


DiRe-9-3-2016-3 by Chris Cirrincione, on Flickr

The recently federally-listed Chiricahua Leopard Frog. These guys were SUPER alert compared to ones I've seen in NM. Was an absolute PITA to get photos and a spaced on getting photos of a couple egg masses. Tadpoles were equally difficult to photograph.


LiCh-9-3-2016 by Chris Cirrincione, on Flickr

One of my favorite garter snakes...western black-neck garter, y-o-y.


ThCyCy-9-3-2016 by Chris Cirrincione, on Flickr

And some black-neck garter food...Canyon Tree Frog metamorph. This guy was maybe 1/2in. Oddly I, nor my best friend saw a single adult arenicolor. Usually in seeing the metamorphs and tads this time of year, we also happen upon adults. The adults can be variable in coloration, so we were really hoping to get an idea of what all the metamorphs we were seeing would turn into. Some can have a nice green marbling/spotting to them; rather nicely contrasted at times.


HyAr-9-4-2016 by Chris Cirrincione, on Flickr

That's all for now. The coral in the OP was the 2nd highlight of the trip. And though the regal was awesome, I've seen them before. The 1st highlight is yet to come....

axis1 said:

Wow! What a cool coral snake! Did you just walk up on this sneaky one? Thought they kinda stayed hidden. An awesome find, at any rate!

Thanx for sharing! :crazy02:

Click to expand...

The coral was road cruised. Unfortunately, that night was just starting to get hot movement wise. Sadly though, we needed to be back into town as our flight home left Tucson at 9am the next day. I had a gut feeling a few more passes on the road we were on would have yielded a tiger rattler and a green rat snake. I was hopeful for the green rat as I'm in need of a female, though at that point I'd be conceding to not actually pairing my male to his given locality. The area could have produced other lifers for me, and it did earlier that same day. Definitely a hot spot of activity, which probably was helped by the incoming then Hurricane Newton out in Baja. Stuff out west tends to move as low pressures come in.