Roger Repp (Herp King of Southern Arizona, where the turtles are strong, the snakes are handsome, and the lizards are all above average) and I were out in Vine Snake country looking for Vine Snakes when Roger spotted a small, thin snake moving across the road. I slammed on the brakes! He leapt from the car! The snake was wrangled! Alas, it was not a Vine Snake after all, but a young, skinny Sonoran Whipsnake. The good news is that this turned out to be my first Sonoran Whipsnake. I thought I had seen them before, but I was misremembering sightings of the similar Desert Striped Whipsnake.

Later in the morning we saw a very large Sonoran Whipsnake in the road, but it high-tailed it out of there before it could be wrangled. We also saw what was probably another young one hanging from the beak of a rapacious roadrunner. But we did not see any Vine Snakes.

While driving back to town after hiking along a nearby river, Matt Cage, Andrew DuBois, and I all simultaneously spotted a large whipsnake stretched halfway across the dirt road, head held high in the manner of these alert diurnal serpents. The snake saw us approach and started moving. Matt slammed on the brakes and we all leaped out in pursuit, but it sped away in an instant and disappeared into the roadside vegetation.