black-tailed rattlesnake

Love in the Rocks

On a balmy August night, Melissa and I headed up a canyon near our home. We had explored this area during the day, but recent night visits revealed orb-weaver spiders, rattlesnakes and vinegaroons hunting under cover of night. Though the pine forest air cools off quickly after sunset, rocky canyonsides hold heat a bit longer,

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Just for kicks?

Ecologists study how interactions between species affect populations. Trophic (feeding) interactions are the most obvious (e.g., lions eat zebras), but competition and mutualism are also important in structuring populations residing together. Food webs consider how seemingly non-interacting populations of species may influence each other indirectly, often through the actions of other species. How individuals interact

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A very long engagement

There’s been so much happening this summer, we haven’t had a chance to introduce our new guy, DoubleR. Since we got back Bane’s old and newly repaired transmitter (see here and here), we’ve been on the lookout for an appropriate candidate. Jeff had a few individuals in mind; big black-tailed rattlesnakes that we’ve seen near

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Life becomes death

Over the summer of 2013, SocialSnakes was blessed to be visited by many great people, including the author of this post, Jennifer Fill. We were honored to host Jennifer for part of her first annual trip to Arizona and introduce her to our neighbors which she had never seen before (western diamond-backed rattlesnakes, patch-nosed snakes,

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Snake tracking update

Although we’ve briefly mentioned some of the rattlesnakes we’re tracking at Muleshoe this spring, we haven’t done a full update in a while. So here ya go. Bane left his den in a hurry back in March. Although we suspect he shared his overwintering spot with several other snakes, we didn’t observe any of the

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