A little while later I spotted an identical snake loosely coiled in shallow water and I grabbed it just as it started to take off (this species is fast!)
That day we only found these two females, though in the past I've found males at this same spot. Males are much larger than females. According to Zhao Ermi, males can reach a total length of 2.63 meters vs 2.23 meters for females. Also, the males in the local population are an olive-greenish color and the females are charcoal grey. But this species has a massive range, and colors vary a lot from one locale to another. The Beijing population is disjunct from all the others, which are further to the south. A very interesting and mysterious fact about the Beijing area is that quite a few species not found in northern China are found here -- but only in a small area, thus giving Beijing a much richer diversity of snakes than anywhere else in northern China. In fact, the main range of several species is a few hundred miles to the south. This is a large male that I found at this same location in 2008:
The next snake was a great find for me, since the only other one I'd seen was a DOR back in 2008 on the road leading down to this spot. The snake was lying on a boulder above the creek and these photos are more or less en situ (same spot, but after I'd picked it up.) Sibynophis chinensis (another species with a disjunct population in Beijing, but primarily lives far to the south.)
Temperatures in the canyon were dropping fast, so we turned around and hiked back without seeing any more snakes on the hike. Our goal was to try night driving on some mountain roads, which is something I only tried once and with no luck.
We drove for an hour or so until reaching the area where we wanted to try and did see a few DORs along the way, so we had our hopes up. When it got completely dark, we started down a windy mountain road that had very little traffic and about 10 minutes later I spotted a very small snake in the headlights and yelled "stop!", but it was too late. We came to a stop a few meters past the snake. I jumped out and ran back, to find that we'd run the snake over. Seeing black and orange bands, I took this snake for Lycodon rufozonatum, which is by far the most common snake in Beijing and the most commonly seen on the road (most of the DORs we'd seen in the afternoon were this species.) But when I got close I realized that this was a much rarer species, and one that was only recently described. In fact, the snake was recently discovered far to the south of Beijing and even more recently a few specimens were found in the area we were herping (very far from the main population). So the fact that we'd run this one over was a real heartbreak! This is Lycodon liuchengchaoi:
The next snake was the more common Lycodon rufozonatum, but it had been recently run over:
This evening we found four live vipers crossing the road, Gloydius brevicaudus. This is the most commonly seen snake when hiking the Great Wall and I've seen dozens of them so I didn't bother to take nice photos with my Nikon. I took a few crappy shots with my cell phone and later regretted not doing a better job:
Here are a couple of shots taken along the Great Wall over ten years ago:
When the road approached the town of Huairou, traffic increased and we stopped seeing snakes so we turned around and did the drive again. When we got to the top, we turned around and did the same stretch on more time. Right around where we'd seen our first snake, I spotted another small black and orange snake and this time we stopped without hitting it. To my delight, it was a live Lycodon liuchengchaoi! This was much larger than the first one, though still a small snake. I kept it until the morning to get some nice photos before releasing it back where we found it:
This day brought my total to 9 snakes of the Beijing 17 (not counting DORs). I'm really looking forward to warmer temperatures in a few months so we can keep trying!
