Favoritos de stephaniepollo

87 degrees at 8:34pm. Second variable groundsnake I’ve ever seen, the last one I saw in this area as well, last summer. Is that a cool pattern or what?🧡🤍I do not collect any reptiles, I just enjoy seeing them and taking pics and sharing my discoveries. And learning about them this way. Good to see some different critters out after the rain Death Valley received this week. Approx .85 inches, Monday and Friday’s storms combined.

“96 degrees” on my vehicle’s temperature gauge, at 8:37pm. (Approx 4,000 feet elevation) Felt cooler than that. I think my temp gauge was off. I have seen 3 variable groundsnakes in this area now, 2 this week and 1 last summer. All were different colors. The first one was black and orange banded with some white, the second was white and striped with orange, and now this one, white with orange bands. Really awesome! Hence the name “variable” haha.

Taken on James King's property with Mike Gray near The Nature Conservancy's Davmis Mountains Preserve during the Davis Mountains Hummingbird Celebration.

Mike spotted this mostly white hummingbird at one of the feeders and we waited patiently for it to go to a couple spots where we could photograph it. Mike sent his photos to Kelly Bryan who identifiied it as a leucistic female Broad-tailed Hummingbird

I was driving south toward Alpine, Texas on Hwy 118 with my wife, Cheryl, when I dodged to miss a snake. I was able to get stopped and turned around and got back to about a 3.5 ft long Bullsnake on the highway. I caught the critter to keep other vehicles from hitting it and asked my wife to hold it for a few shots. We then took it to a safer area and released it.