Moving on, we continued to explore the ranch until early evening.
Nice rocky outcrops
After scouting some of the area out we finally sat back and waited for darkness to fall.
Rob again found the first snake of the night, a small ground snake (
Sonora semiannulata). The walk was treacherous. When being careful not to loose your footing while meandering around the rocky outcrops you had to be as equally careful not to place your foot down on an awaiting rattlesnake. Not to mention that and it seemed like every cactus there wanted to kill you too. Although a spectacular place to be with lots of potential, we decided to leave the ranch shortly after midnight. Since we were in Black Gap we decided to make one pass south to La Linda before making our way back to Sanderson. We quickly found 2 adult western diamondbacks (
Crotalus atrox) and 2 adult trans-pecos ratsnakes (
Bogertophis s. subocularis), all alive on the road. Black gap was busy that night, seeing 4 or 5 other cars in a single pass.
While heading east of Marathon, we came across an adult big bend milksnake (
Lampropeltis t. celaenops) which was DOR and definitely a very disappointing find. It was my first
celaenops after spending 10 years in that area of the Trans-Pecos region.
Once back in Sanderson, we split up and walked the west cut for a short while, observing one adult western diamondback (
Crotalus atrox) crawling along the top of the cut. We headed east of town and spent a bit of time walking more cuts before calling it a night a little before 3:00 am.
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