Video: Get Intimate with the Shrub-Steppe, Washington State

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technoendo
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Video: Get Intimate with the Shrub-Steppe, Washington State

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The Kittitas Environmental Education Network (KEEN) partners up with Central Washington University's biology department to put on a free public event every May 12th where anyone can learn about river bugs, fish, lichen, geology, reptiles, plants, mammals, birds, and other aspects of the shrub-steppe habitat found on the dryer eastern side of Washington's cascade mountain range. There is a lot going on at this event but I mostly covered the snake hikes with Professor Dr Daniel D Beck where he tubed a northern pacific rattlesnake to the great delight of everyone in attendance. I was thrilled that my friend Kelly and I played a role in quickly locating a rattlesnake to make things easy for Dr Beck. We returned to the same site in an hour with a second group and the gravid female rattlesnake was still there to be tubed/touched by them. Its amusing to see such a range of individual behaviors in rattlesnakes -- this one never rattled, not when it was found, not when it was tong'd and tubed, not even after doing it a second time. That is one chill rattlesnake!



https://www.ycic.org/get-intimate-with-the-shrub-steppe

If you can make it out to Umtanum Creek Recreation Area just south of Ellensburg WA in 2019 I'll probably see you there!
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Scott Waters
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Re: Video: Get Intimate with the Shrub-Steppe, Washington St

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Another great one. You're on to something.....clearly you understand producing, shooting and editing. Keep it up!

Scott
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technoendo
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Re: Video: Get Intimate with the Shrub-Steppe, Washington St

Post by technoendo »

Thanks Scott! I try and make these videos suck a little bit less each time. :)

I'm currently working on a "yellow scales" video about a yellow locality of desert striped whipsnake found in southwestern oregon and the shasta alligator lizard found in northern california. I also shot some new footage in Palm Desert, Yuma, San Diego on a trip a few weeks ago which I plan to combine with footage from a trip down there last September, a lot of target species, new lifers, and meeting up with some cool fellow YouTube herpers. Bumping into border patrol along our southern border felt like a southwestern herper's right of passage! I also spent 9 days out in Utah chasing out of range pyromelana/semiannulata and attempting to follow up on a another recent report of a utah milksnake with more pyro features than just the white nose. Even though I was targetting snakes it turned into more of a lizard adventure. I did some shrimping a week ago in the puget sound and will probably make a shrimping video in the next few months to mix things up. I've got unpublished footage from herping trips to Orlando, Las Vegas, South Carolina, a visit with a pacnw herpetology luminary, I'd like to crank out a feature on tetrodotoxin resistance (Dr Butch Brody), and also one using a photography/software based method to measure snakes compared against the trusty cloth tape measure.

I'm packing my bags today to spend a week camping in central Oregon and its my plan to spend as much time as I can in the oreganus/lutosus intergrade zone to try and find some wildly patterned buzztails. I also want to try and redeem myself after soaking crayfish traps 4 times last year and not getting a single crayfish. I'm on a mission to make a Po'Boy sandwich! I do regret I'll be missing the reptile show in Puyallip WA (https://pacnwrs.com/) -- I had hoped to finally make it to this show and film it. We're also on the cusp of the summer road cruising season in the pacnw and I'm hopeful that by the time I get back from camping that central WA will be crawling with snakes!
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