These sideblotched lizards are common and found about everywhere. Even in urban Phoenix and Tucson, they can be seen running around on the maze of block walls and stucco. This one is particularly colorful, found in northern Arizona.

If you walk a stream in much of Arizona right now, there’s a good chance you’ll run into one of these. It’s a Black-necked Gartersnake, getting breath and a break between dives to eat tadpoles. In any of the isolated pools along this drainage, there may be one or two, filling up on these seasonal […]

A Mojave Rattlesnake near Phoenix, Arizona last year. This relatively young snake. While the old idea of counting rattle segments to tell the age of a snake isn’t accurate, much can still be learned. For instance, this snake still has its prebutton intact, which it was born with – its first shed skin revealing the […]

A young Fer De Lance in Peru. These snakes can appear anywhere and everywhere, so watching every step and hand fall is a must. I’m always happy to see one though.

An Arizona Ridgenosed Rattlesnake with her newborns. Like many snakes, including all vipers in the U.S., these rattlesnakes do not lay eggs. They give live birth to young, which stay with the mother for a period of time afterward. Once they’ve shed skin for the first time, around ten days later, they will disperse. In […]

A Blacktailed Rattlesnake hiding out just outside its den. It took a few years to zero in on the exact spot, surveying the area in early spring and late fall and tracking where snakes were found in early egress. Eventually, there it was – with just two snakes in it to start, but the start […]

A Greater Short-horned Lizard from central Arizona. No doubt the comments will be full of “we call em horny toads as kids”. But, there’s more to it 🙂 These are lizards, rather than toads … which is a surprise to many born-and-raised Arizona residents. There are also SEVEN distinct species of them in our state, […]

A Sonoran Sidewinder from the Phoenix area, out and about late at night as they tend to do. This one is large, for a small species, and for a male. These snakes are under two feet long, with females being slightly larger as full-grown adults. There are several reasons this may be the case, one […]

A Southwestern Speckled Rattlesnake resting along the top of a drainage after a night out. During the summer months, these and other rattlesnake species are primarily nocturnal, being encountered by people mostly in the hour before and after sunrise. As soon as the sun reaches the area, these snakes make a beeline for their aestivation […]

A Banded Rock Rattlesnake from southeastern Arizona.