Viper Imposter

Gopher Snake
Pituophis melanoleucus

I was reptiling at 50 this morning when I saw this little guy crossing the road. I was able to straddle him between my wheels, then get out and take some pictures before lifting him safely off the road (with a stick, of course). He was young--about 24 inches long and had the triangular viper head, but no rattles.

I saw him again several hours later as I headed for home. He had made it to the other side of the road, but this time he had a flat spot the width of a tire in his middle. Sigh.

Pegasus

The genetic make-up of Great Basin wild (feral) horses was investigated by blood typing studies. Blood samples of 975 feral horses from seven trap sites in Nevada and Oregon were tested by serological and electrophoretic techniques for genetic markers at 19 polymorphic loci. The average number of variants for the seven feral populations [72.1 +/- 3.2 (SEM), range 62-85] was not significantly different from that of 16 domestic breeds (75.0 +/- 11.5, range 58-105). The expected average frequency of heterozygotes per locus (average heterozygosity) for the feral populations (0.402 +/- 0.009, range 0.368-0.442) was not significantly different from the domestic breeds (0.389 +/- 0.045, range 0.295-0.443). Dendrograms constructed using pairwise comparisons of Nei's distance measurements substantiated anecdotal accounts of the origins of Great Basin horses from Iberian, American saddle horse and draft horse breeds.

Veterinary Genetics Laboratory, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California, Davis 95616-8744

Still, they're fun to watch!

Proud Prince

Pronghorn
Antilocapra americana

New Beginings

Common Raven eggs. The nest is lined with sheep wool.
Corvus Corax










The first Birdcage Evening Primrose of the year
Oenothera deltoides

(double click on the image to see it in detail)

More Wild Feral Horses

I don't know if these horses were sparring or spooning

Wild Feral Horses

There was a herd of maybe 50 horses feeding at the bottom of a cliff. These two let me come close.

The First Entry

It was cold--bitterly cold, so cold the stones were shivering. So I stayed in the car. Spooking a bird off it's eggs would have been irresponsible...right? Mostly, I wanted to see what was in the air. Today it was dust and wind. The wind was not just cold, it was pushy and aggressive and full of fine talcum grit. My pee turned to mud before it hit the ground--of course it traveled nearly a mile behind me first. And by the time it met dirt, it was a icicle.

Other than grit, in the air there was a pair of Golden Eagles, a pair of Red Tails and a lone Red Tail, a Prairie Falcon, a Ferruginous Hawk, and, of course, Ravens.

Jessie found some Pronghorns early on and started yelling about it---HunHuntWarrrugh HmmrreHuhnHuhn (translation: Let me out and I'll run 'em down for ya).

So I let her out. They stared at her lurching toward them for quite awhile before they turned and trotted off with a bewildered look backward now and then.



I guess she felt the urge to punctuate the chase with an apropos comment.