Diamondback

I got these photos of what I am pretty sure is a Western Diamonback rattlesnake while on a hike with my brother in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, deep in the Sonoran Desert. Luckily it heard me coming, and gave me some warning!


 







Comments

  1. David C.April 2, 2013 at 4:43 AM

    Great photos - looks like it to me. They don't always warn. See these in the yard sometimes; while mountain biking, one was resting in the shade...glad I went into a tricky place and had to walk my bike through that time, or I would have been going faster and maybe struck by that diamondback! (at least their venom is not as bad as that of Mojave rattlers, or so I've heard)

    ReplyDelete
  2. MorongobillApril 14, 2013 at 11:12 AM

    When I was about 13 back home in the piney woods of south Georgia, while exploring a section of those woods I heard a loud rattle very close- I froze still, did not move, didn't even move my head to look- and after what seemed like a lifetime the buzzing sound went away, and I came out of my frozen state and lit out for the dirt road.

    I have experienced nothing like that since, and hope to never irritate another rattlesnake in my lifetime. Being about 2 miles via dirt road walking from my house, I would never have survived a bite from what probably was a very large, eastern diamondback.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How Many Plants Species in the Desert?

Would you expect that California's desert hosts gives the redwood forest a run for its money when it comes to plant biodiversity?  It's easy to take the desert for granted when all you want to do is zoom through it on the highway and get to your destination. But you are passing by an amazing and biologically diverse ecosystem.  There are at least 2,450 native plant species found in California's desert, according to a great article by Chris Clarke on desert life , posted at KCET. If you want to learn more about our amazing deserts, join Desert Biodiversity, a new organization dedicated to exploring, respecting and defending the deserts.
Read more

Mowing Vegetation as Mitigation: Trump Administration Practice Goes Unchallenged

Image
The Trump administration is again touting the practice of mowing thousands of acres of desert vegetation as environmentally-responsible, despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary.  The draft environmental review of the Yellow Pine Solar project in southern Nevada claims that vegetation mowing - as opposed to bulldozing - will yield positive outcomes that are highly doubtful.   This positive framing of the construction practice misleads the public and decisionmakers and ignores decades of scientific research regarding the impacts of mechanized disturbance on desert wildlands.  According to the draft environmental review: "Mowing is becoming the standard on large site-type ROWs to prevent permanent impairment of public lands (as mandated by FLPMA) and in lieu of off-site mitigation... Mowing methods are designed to help preserve soils, biological soil crusts, soil seed banks, native perennial vegetation diversity and structure, and cacti and yucca species, and to resist
Read more

Ivanpah Wildlife, Visual Resources and Botany Hearings Completed

Image
According to someone testifying to protect rare natural resources in the Mojave Desert at the California Energy Commission (CEC) evidentiary hearings for the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS), the 11 January CEC hearing for the Ivanpah Solar Energy site lasted until nearly 10:30pm, and covered visual resources and the impacts on wildlife.  Today's hearing was scheduled to address botanical resources, which may present the greatest challenge to the CEC and BLM's consideration of granting right-of-way to BrightSource Energy, since the site selected by BrightSource happens to host several sensitive and rare plants. The CEC Staff rebuttal to comments from environmental groups and BrightSource Energy spent considerable time addressing arguments requesting alternative site considerations and changes to the mitigation efforts directed at special status plant species. Most environmental inervenors argued for more effective measures to ensure that construction at Ivanp
Read more