Hit the desert with a new friend to try and find my first B/W king. We found a few of these....

One of these....

And finally one of these....

Unfortunately it wasn't black and white.
We found quite a few DORs. One of which was black and white....


It's the first black and white shovel nose I've seen. Are they common? We ended up seeing 2 of them.
A stick....


Lou and Barry

Awesome finds! I especially like that C. ruber! Were these all road cruised? Did you guys happen to stumble upon any C. cerastes while you were out there in the desert?

-Tony

Yeh, road cruised. We did see some sidewinders, unfortunately all DOR. For awhile all we found was DOR after DOR. I believe 8 in all.

wow that is so discouraging to hear:[ but you found some awesome herps and those stick bugs are neat. found two myself up near san luis obispo not too long ago

Would that be an anery Chionactis? Pretty cool!

Loving the king

Here's the second white and black shovel nose. Also DOR.

Seriously?

Yeh, 3 DOR shovels, 2 of which were black and white. I thought it was strange as I've never seen one before.

Ok just saw this post after PMing you lol great stuff! I dont know if those are ground snakes. They dont look quite like what i have found although very similar. That really white shovel is crazy! I agree it looks anary!!! The scond one looks odd as well. The firt one is very typical colored. That king is still awesome and looks pretty black and white compared to what you usually find though.


Glad you could get out and explore the desert though too bad about all the DORs. Thats the one thing I dont like about where u were. Lots of traffic =/

Lou here is a pic of a variable groundsnake from Calherps how they would look out this way. They arent really know to occur much west of indio... I tought at fist the way you described the blk/white shovel it could possibly be one of these guys but it looks like yours are all shovelnose.

The one I found near joshua tree looked exactly like this and so did the DOR i found out East of indio.

They are nifty little snakes.

Yeah... those clarus phase shovels are way cool... but, depending on where you are, you need to check very carefully and take LOTS of pics (including ventral) to make sure it's not a groundsnake. jim

Thanks Jim, I didn't know there was a "clarus" phase shovel. Unfortunately, with both of them being DOR, we didn't take any venter or closeup shots.

Well... that's what I call them. like Longnose, too many show up to be considered truly aberrant (IMO) but hey... perhaps 'clarus' could be considered another word for anery...
I will say that usually even the clarus phase rhino's typically have traces of red, while the shovels are usually straight up Blk/Wht.
You're sure lucky when it comes to kings... jim

PS... as for how common Blk/Wht shovels are... I think they mostly come from where the yellow/brns are found... don't think I've ever seen one from the hiD or way down south, where shovels are typically tri-colored.

I'm checking this out on my phone, but that shovel nose looks axanthic. Was there a bluish hue to its white like it looks in the pictures?

Just so there's no confusion, we found 3 DOR shovels. 2 of which were black and white.

This one....

And this one which I cropped a bit earlier to remove the midsection.....


Not sure about the bluish hue. I'll see what pics Barry got and upload a few more.

Here's 2 iPhone pics. The normal one compared to the second B/W one.

Now that I'm looking at it on the computer, it doesn't look as bluish as it was on my phone. It looks like those black and white ones from SD Co. Since these come in black and white anyway, and you guys found 2, I'd say its just another phenotype from that area. Cool finds, though. I've never found a black and white one. Nice king, too.

Jeez, Lou what a pity. 3 Shovelnoses all DOR. Coo looking King as well.

reako45

Very cool Black-n-white shovel! Now you know where to find a live one...