Rhinocheilus lecontei
Baird & Girard, 1853
Val Verde Co., Texas. May 21, 1999.
Snakes are where you find them, as the saying goes, and nothing exemplifies that better than this species. We were camped at Seminole Canyon, and when I rolled out of the sack before seven o’clock one morning, the sky completely overcast with low clouds. I took advantage of my early rising and took a long hot shower, and on my return found my companions still chasing snakes in dreamland. I grabbed my camera and put on a wide-angle lens. A pair of Chihuahuan Ravens accompanied me as I walked over to the empty campsite next to ours, and took shots of our camp against the cloudy backdrop. As I approached the campsite, a flash of color in the fire pit caught my eye – it was a snake! I pulled a beautiful twenty inch Texas longnose snake out from under a half-burned log. Now this was really something – catching snakes in camp wearing shorts and beach flip-flops! My friends slept on as I took my time with that gorgeous snake, and chuckling to myself, for indeed the early bird does get the worm! Since then the Texas longnose (R. l. tesselatus) has been removed as a subspecies, but that may change again in the future. Pictured here are a lecontei from Riverside Co., California (top) and a black-and-white ‘clarus phase’) longnose from San Diego Co., California.
My Flickr album for this species is here.
HerpMapper records for this species are here.
