Here are a few critters from the Sonoran Desert Museum in Tucson for this #wednesdaywalk by
Right as you enter the museum to the right is a reptile building showing many of the snakes throughout the Sonoran desert.
Here is a black tailed rattlesnake who is quite tame and looks out next to the glass. Later it moved and I was able to see its blackish tail right before the rattle.
Here is a Speckled "granite" Rattlesnake. Their habitat is obviously large granite rocks where they are probably picking off pack rats that are making their nests between the rocks.
Here is an Arizona Black Rattlesnake with some interesting looking silver eyes.
People often mistake them with Timber Rattlesnakes but those guys live in forests not the desert.
Here's a brief chuckwala interlude from the snakes lol.
As a kid growing up in AZ one of my main goals was to find and catch one of these. The problem is I found them but they have a way of puffing themselves up in rock cracks so you can't fish them out.
My daughter had fun in the packrat den where they had large scale creepy crawlies. It took a while to peel her out of here but it was a nice cool break from the dry outside desert landscape.
Now for another rattlesnake. The stripes give it the common name of tiger rattlesnake and they tend to be somewhat smaller in size.
Here is a famous character in the desert I've found a few times out in the wild. The Gila monster is one of the few venomous lizards in the world. They are slow, dumb and mostly eat bird eggs so people can easily catch them then get bitten. They have to grind their neurotoxic venom into you with their teeth so if you get bitten they are hard to remove. Also you really have to be bothering them to get them to bite you.
That's all for now, thanks for looking :-)
More soon...