Thursday, April 12, 2007

The desert comes alive!



It was a beautiful windy day so I thought I would go out on a good hike while the weather was cool.
Good thing I did, I would have missed a lot!

On the way up the mountain (Trail to petroglyphs ) I ran into these two amazing desert dwellers. At first I thought this snake was innocuous, remembering something about "red against yellow killing a fellow" so ..hey, no yellow, I'm good. What I learned later is that it could be yellow or white! The distinguishing factor here is the black head extending past his eyes .
Yep...An Arizona Coral Snake.
The head and mouth being so small though, unless someone is just being really stupid and handling the snake, the chances of being bitten are rare. Just the same, it was a thrill of the day.

The landscape pic is right around where I saw the snake.

Another great find was a collared lizard. He was very accomodating in his posing for me. I was able to get pretty close.

Great day outside. Now the wind is really whipping up .




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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's interesting how camouflaged the lizard is, and how NOT camouflaged the snake is by comparison.

Alice Young said...

What an amazing place to live... looks like there is always change, always activity. I really must find a good excuse to come down to the southwest. (Like a calligraphy workshop!)