Day Two - Welcome to Club Gentilis


GPR


Kansas Bullsnake


My first gentilis


Gentilis the second...


A common find under rocks...


Scarlet Mallow (Sphaeralcea coccinia)


Adult gentilis


Rick shows off a Bullie


Nice GPR


Speckled King

Nothing like a crappy dinner and a tawdry motel to make a herping trip complete.  We had traveled a bit west the night before, and on day two found ourselves in central Kansas.  Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so we stopped at one of those 'Hungry Heifer' truckstop smorgasbord buffets and tucked away a couple breakfasts.  This was rare fun - eight Hungry Herpers breaking bread together.  The meal was made even more memorable by the sight of a large trucker giving himself a sponge bath in the bathroom sink... travel certainly broadens the mind and in some cases lessens one's appetite.

Today we were going to work some rock cuts on the sides of a north-south road.  Now we were in true gentilis country, so our hopes were up in this regard. The first couple cuts produced a few Prairie Ringnecks and a cute Ornate Box Turtle ensconced under a flat rock.  Just as we rolled into a small town we spied some railroad tracks and radioed (each vehicle had an FRS unit) for a stop and a look.  Boards, metal and rocks were lifted and before long Rick had turned up a very nice Bullsnake.  Just a few feet away Tracey found an adult Great Plains Rat Snake.  Tracey is very fond of GPRs and I knew he was stoked at finally capturing one in the field.  The Bullsnake was rather dull due to ecdysis being immanent. Jeff helped it shed its skin then and there, leaving us with a much prettier Bullsnake to photograph.

North of town, the next large roadcut proved to be a good one.  Under a large flat rock I found my first Central Plains Milk, a juvenile from last year's hatch.  It was opaque but was still a pretty little thing to see. We took some photos and then I let it crawl back under the rock where I found it.  A little later I turned up a second gentilis, about the same size as the first, and while we were photographing this one Dav shouted "Gentilis" and held up a juvenile.  I had to disappoint him - "that's the first one we found!" and the guys gave him some good-natured ribbing over it.

These rock cuts provided some interest in other ways.  The soil was thin and dry, and the plant life was a bit different, some of the species more typical of the upper Chihuahuan desert than shortgrass prairie.  There was prickly pear and yuccas in bloom here and there, and showy evening primrose all over the place.  We were also finding a lot of Centuroides scorpions under the rocks, and one had to be careful, since oftentimes they were on the undersides of the rocks themselves.  I felt a couple under my fingers on a several occasions, but fortunately didn't get stung.  Down lower near the roadbed where the soil retained more moisture, we turned up Prairie Ringnecks in considerable numbers.  I'm sure these small snakes were an important food item for gentilis and other creatures.  There were also plenty of Great Plains Skinks as well.

The next roadcut was a small one that the Illinois vehicle zoomed by and missed, but the Iowa contingent stopped and checked out while we turned around and waited.  Sure enough, Jim radioed us to come on over - he had found a very nice adult, and Jeff found another juvenile soon thereafter.  Jim's specimen was different in appearance the red bands were very wide, much like a Red Milk, and the white bands were actually a yellowish tan color.  Very pretty.  While the photographers were at work shooting this snake coiled up on a tree root, Rick was poking around  the creek across the road, and turned up another Bullsnake sunning itself on a rockpile.

 At the next road cut Dav finally joined Club Gentilis by finding a nice juvenile, and Tracey too in short order.  It was turning out to be a great day for Milk Snakes!  Down near the roadbed we found a third Bullsnake, and Jim came across a pretty little GPR.  This emoryi had a high blotch count, with some of the blotches broken in two.  A neat-looking snake.  At our last roadcut, a smaller one, Jeff found a juvenile Speckled King Snake.  These snakes are supposedly intergrades between the Speckled (holbrooki) and the Desert King (splendida).  They appear to be highly variable in pattern and color, and are in need of a good name, like Kansas King or Western Chain King, Prairie King being taken already...


Photo by Rick Milas

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