# Night Field Herping in Grand Junction, CO



## Kat Fenix (Aug 3, 2014)

I  begged/asked my boyfriend to take me somewhere with a lot of rocks last night so I could look for herps. He took me to a trail that goes through a dried river bed that had recently flooded.  We got there after dark and walked around for about 2 hours. It wasn't really his thing to just walk around, he likes biking more but I was having fun so he was cool with it, hah xD

Probably need to get there a little earlier next time or buttcrack of dawn early next time so I can find more.

My "prize" is right after the solifugid. 

Found a lot of Solifugid, tiny little guys! Really loved watching them run everywhere. The first one was the biggest at an est. 2.5" long, the other two were an inch or less. I do not know species, so if anyone does, I'd love to know!
















This was my prize though! I was doing a last loop around a spot and found some old hunks of plywood. Flipped a few, nothing to show, then sadly flipped another one thinking it was going to be barren, but look what I found!

PRETTY sure it's a Juvenile Yellow Headed Collared Lizard (_Crotaphytus collaris auriceps_) and PRETTY sure it's female. You can see she was in great condition, had some red mites on her back right leg. I gently picked her up because my boyfriend wanted to see her and he was sitting on a rock a little ways away waiting for me to come back so we could walk back to the motorcycle. I gently scraped the mites off with a credit card and released her back under the plywood after I was done with these photos. She was so cool! My first larger lizard find!  I was so excited.





"Bro, put me down unless you wanna buy some insurance...."





Gosh look at that gorgeous face. I barely had my fingers wrapped around her. Very still. Wasn't breathing hard at all either. Really cool to get some up close photos of her cute little face!






On the walk back I found this MASSIVE Wolf Spider mom! Look at all those babies! She was probably the biggest wolf spider I had ever seen. She was kind enough to halt her trek across the riverbed for me to get a photo.

Reactions: Like 1 | Love 1


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## Biollantefan54 (Aug 3, 2014)

I love those solifugids! The lizard is pretty as well lol.


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