These pretty little snakes are excellent "sand swimmers", spending most of their time just under the desert sand's surface, in a perpetual quest for yummy insect larvae and other tasty underground morsels. This one was encountered at night in a dry water hole in a dry streambed. It sat still long enough for me to get a picture, but slowly vanished under the leaf litter before another camera-bearing herper in our group could get his equipment ready.

The sandsnakes in this area were considered a separate species until recently: Chilomeniscus cinctus (Banded Sand Snake or Banded Sandsnake). But the SSAR North American herp names book groups three formerly-separate species into this one.