Saturday, May 5, 2007 Tom Murray and I headed up to Jefferson Notch next to Mount Washington to search for the extremely rare Pytho strict*us, which was reported on Mount Washington over 100 years ago. We had planned to drive up to the notch and spend the day skinning bark from dead trees and logs, which I had a permit from the Forest service to do.

At 3009 ft., the notch is the highest elevation reached by "a public highway" in New Hampshire, but words can be misleading. The highway is a dirt road and it was closed to traffic with a heavy iron gate barring entrance, forcing us to hike in (and up) about 6 miles, stopping to turn rocks, roll logs and crack open conks along the way. We spent a little over an hour-and-a-half at the target elevation, finding at least two Pytho species and a number of other beetles of interest, both adults and larvae.

This and several other Pytho larvae I was unable to identify in the field, thinking and hoping that it was the elusive P. strict*us. Back home, however, with enlarged images to study and compare with drawings in a paper by Darren Pollock, this species proved to be another new one for me and for bugguide, Pytho seidlitzi. I hope at least one matures so I can get adult images to include here. I have never seen a photo of an adult P. seidlitzi so I don't don't know what they look like. This will be larval association in reverse; identify the adult by the larva it came from :-)