A Visit from the Son We Never Wanted. 8-24-2019

Matt, the son we never wanted, was going to be in town for a short stint and wanted to take a peek nearby to see if any baby Copperheads had come plopping out of their Mom's cloaca yet. Since he was a drunken mess the last time we saw him (at Bob's wedding), we wanted to meet up so we could renew our faith in him. We wanted to say moist a lot, too. It was still in the 60s and not expected to get much past 80° this day.

He got there before us and was deep into the hike by the time we arrived. We hurried along the trail to get to him. Andrea wouldn't let me peek under logs, not because she was worried about my healing arm, but because it would waste time. Luckily, despite moving quickly, we saw this Racer laying off trail warming up for the day.

Look at that gorgeous iridescence. Our first Massachusetts Racer this year. Matt came up just as it moved on.

Since he was now with us, Andrea lifted her flipping ban and found herself a small Redback.

The cooler temps were working to our advantage.

Our MO for looking for Copper babies was simple... scour the hills around the known den sites figuring Mom wouldn't be too much of a douchebag and drop them off super far from there. While we didn't score any snakes, we were surprised to see this small (last year's model?), chonky Spotted Salamander under a rock.


This Mantis that Matt saw was very interested in a nearby cricket.


We did some poking around some rocky hills with precarious footing. Not wanting to break any more limbs, I took respite at the bottom and waited. Andrea soon came to join me.

We Bob'd it for a while, which is to say we rested while the kid looked around.

I stayed low and worked my way back to the trail. I was sure some shoestring Garters or Coppers or Racers would be seen, but we never saw any. I did, however, see two more unexpected Spotteds.



We all got back together to head back. Andrea, then Matt, found Peepers. Two totally different designs on these guys.



Our last animal there was a recent metamorph Spotted that Matt found.


We left and got some Vietnamese food and smoothies and talked for a while. Matt had other plans so we decided to hike a bit more after lunch. We headed further in to Norfolk County to walk around a reservoir. We had turtles on our minds.

It didn't take long for us to see some Painted Turtles there. Man, I love these animals.




Andrea lifted a massive rock and managed to hold it up while I fumbled with my camera. It was worth it to get a shot of this young Pickerel.


I saw a distant Painter up basking so I extended my zoom and got this photo...

Hey, that's no Painter... that's a Snapper!

Here's another Peeper with yet another design.


There was some kind of avian meeting going on out there...


A Painter deep into a shed.

Looks like a bowl of potato chips.

A small, dusty toad. They're so hard to tell when they're this size and this particular place always has me guessing. I'm going with American, based solely on very large partoid glands.


Likewise, with only a glimpse of this frog, how do I properly ID it? I'm going with Bull, anyway. So there. Eat me.


Our last sight was this very old Musk who was up for a bask.


Now that's a-what I'm-a talkin' about.

And that was our day. We got in over 7 miles, got to see our son (even though we never wanted him) and saw 10 species on an August afternoon. Can't argue with that. I did get a 'skeeter bite at the reservoir, but as I haven't yet dropped dead or exhibited any (more than usual) signs of brain damage, I'm going to guess I didn't contract EEE yet.