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.
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