My first L.A. County Newport

In early May 2006 me, Don Huffman, his two niece's, and nephew, went out flipping boards in an area Don introduced me to that spring. It turned out to be another great day. We ended up finding 5 kings in total, including the first Newport I've seen in the wild. It was one of the most amazing herping moments I've ever had because I had never seen a kingsnake like this in the wild, and had really wanted to find a Newport for quite some time. It wasn't your Typical Newport-Long Beach morph, this snake was also slightly Scrambled banded with areas of extra wide diamonds and dashes. Here's some photos taken that day. (click on photos to enlarge)

Some more recent pictures.

That same Spring, I bread him to a female captured in the same field. The results were 6 normal banded, 1 hypermelanistic, and 2 Newports, one being Scrambled banded and the other typical. First is the normal banded hatchling.

The typical Newport.

 This was the only Scrambled banded Newport ever produced by the original male, even after several breedings to different females.

The strangest thing was getting this hyper in the clutch with neither of the parents being hypermelanistic. The hypermelanistic gene is co dominate.

Newport-Long Beach Scrambled Banded Morph

Spring of 2006 was my best year for finding Cal king morphs and the rarest of them all was this Newport with an aberrant pattern. Most Typical Newport's have a broken stripe running down the back with aberrancies on the sides. This snake was still a Newport, but had an aberrant pattern to it. In late May 2006, So Cal was hit with a heat wave that reached into the 90's, killing the flipping season. Two weeks later, the arrival of a "June gloom" brought lower temperatures and a few snakes to the surface again. The day before, I had been scouting out some new spots when I discovered a few boards with a kingsnake under one. The next day I decided to hit one of my favorite spots to see by any chance I might find something cool. After lifting several boards with no luck, I flipped this beautiful California kingsnake. At first, it looked like a banded king with wider than normal yellow bands until I noticed a small amount of striping near the tail. Then I realized this was a Newport when I seen the tail was chocolate topped. As you can see, it was very dry by this time. The board the snake was found under. (click on the photos to enlarge)

Funny thing is, I hadn't noticed how different this Newport was compared to the one me and Don Huffman found a couple of months earlier. It wasn't until I got home and looked at it longer that I noticed there was very little striping on the animal. I was still new to Cal king morphs and today I would recognize the abnormality immediately. Only one other Newport like this has been documented in recent history and was found a few months before mine by my friend Josh Rosenstein. I consider my self very lucky to have found this snake. Here are a few more photos taken more recently. 

When bred to a normal banded female in 2008, one out of 5 eggs hatched out another Scrambled banded Newport. 

When bred in 2010 to a NP-LB Striped Mud morph, I got 3 typical Newport's and two normal banded. apparently the Scrambled banded morph is not a for sure shot every time and may be the reason why this morph is so rare in the wild.

Newport-Long Beach Barred Morph

In 2006 I found a kingsnake in Riverside Co. with a partial "barred" pattern. (click on photos to enlarge)

Since then, all I could think about, when herping Western Riverside Co., was finding a king with a completely barred pattern. Here's one of the Riverside areas I searched.

Finally during the spring of 2008 I lucked out and found this snake in pure form. When I first laid my eyes on her after lifting a board, she looked like a normal banded from above. It wasn't until I bent down to pick her up that I noticed I had found exactly what I was hoping to find for the past two years. What impressed me most about this snake is how complete the over all barred pattern is. Most Newport-Long Beach barred morphs more dots and dashes in the pattern.

Whitewater Hypomelanistic Cal king

I had a really good night one September night in 2005 at Whitewater. It had rained the day before for the first time in months, so I was hoping I would do good this night. I had been hitting WW every weekend during this time and was only finding a few snakes on average, mostly baby Long nosed. On this night I found 11 snakes all together including a Rosy boa on Tipton, which is a strange place to find one. As I was driving on WW I noticed a small king on the side and couldn't stop in time. I slammed on the breaks, jumped out, and ran back. As soon as my light hit it I noticed is was brown instead of the usual black for a kingsnake this size in this area. This snake was a yearling. As found on the road. (click on photos to enlarge)

I collected it and continued road cruising. Every half hour or so I would stop and look at the little king. The brown coloration really had me puzzled. At the time I was thinking maybe someone let a king from another locality go here, but later I realized this kings pattern and white rings were consistant with this locality. Even the Cal kings with similar coloration are darker than this as juveniles. Later I found a DOR king on WW the same size as the hypo and photographed them together. This photo came out in Hubbs book on Common kingsnakes. Of course I'm very proud of that. lol First picture is taken with a DOR yearling from Whitewater, and the second photo was the hypo yearling taken in the sun.

In this area kings start out nearly black then fade to a dark brown as adults. I had found at least 15 kings on WW and the other surrounding areas over the years and none of the adults even reached this shade of brown. Here are some photo's of this king as a small adult.

That first picture was used on a poster for Cal king morphs produced by Diamondback trading cards. I still consider this my coolest find ever because its a rare morph of my favorite species. The only other hypo I've heard of from the region was found a couple of years later by Hellihooks in Morongo Valley. We wanted to pair them up but unfortunately, Jim's snake didn't make it through brumation. I think it was an old male. Last year I was able to pick up a male from the same general area and bred it to my female. Here are the hets. I held back a male to prove the gene out.