Year of the Snake - No. 11,12,13,14,15, 16, 17, 18 Arizona Black Rattlesnakes

Crotalus cerberus (yes, like the three-headed dog of Greek mythology)

Over three weekends (Memorial Day, June 1, & June 22), we spotted eight Arizona Black Rattlesnakes near Flagstaff. We had returned to a place we found last year. These are interesting snakes because they are very attached to a certain location or even rock. They will come back to the same spot year after year. 

What's also interesting is that their color changes from day to night sometimes. Individual snakes can have very different personalities. One snake would sit for hours with me watching. Another time I was walking down a creek bed and one buzzed before I got within 10 feet. 

During the hottest part of the day, the snakes hide in cracks between rocks to stay cool.

A pregnant female keeps her body temperature warm by basking on the rocks.

This male snake rattled when I was 6 feet away and hadn't seen him yet. He was coiled up under some grass. I only saw the tip of his rattle and thought he might be a juvenile. But when I pushed the grass aside with my snake hook, I found he was an almost 3-foot long adult male (large for this species).  He didn't stop rattling and struck at me twice in the 10 minutes I was photographing him. By the way, I was well out of strike range. I think it was a bluff strike.