May 1st- Boy oh Boyden!

Psyched to get our collective buttocks back into the wilds of Boyden Refuge in Taunton, we started with a large brekkie at 50's Diner and pulled in to the refuge's parking lot at roughly 11 AM.

It didn't take long to spot or first herp tauntin' us in Taunton... this behemoth redback!


Further down the path, the Fragrance Garden gave us a thrill to remember. First up was a pair of snakelets with 'tude. The garter was trying his Jimmy Durante impression out while the milk snake (1st of 2010) sided him.


Both of these guys were very bitey... biting us, each other and just being assholes in general. My kinda young, tenacious squamates!

Andrea gets tagged!

BUT LOVES IT...


Something caught my eye while Andrea was playing with the vicious snakes... our first toad of 2010!


The real surprise came within minutes...

We were looking through some rocks and the plants below us were rustling. I cleared some of the ground cover and found this...

And then Andrea found another... even smaller- with it's egg tooth still attached!!

They were within a small area bordered by brick... easy enough for the mother turtle to lay eggs and get out, but far too high of a barrier for these lil' fellas to get out of. What to do? Do we play God and move them closer to the pond? To we let them die here? Will they eventually find their way out? Will they just get eaten by something anyway?



They're too cute... we took them towards the pond.
On the way we saw another toad:


and Long Tall Sally:


And then we released the lil' fellas on the hillside near the pond.


This was all in the first 45 minutes of being there, so we could have left... but we'd had a large breakfast and there were many more sights to see. In the following hours we saw...

Fiddleheads


More toads (You gotta lose your mind in Taunton: Toad City!)



Redbacks


Young green frogs (1st of 2010)



A Mom mouse with her babies suckling (obviously, a tough shot to get... sorry for the quality)


And this keen spider, who shall be ID'd in the future.


Not a bad way to start the year for Taunton! I'd have preferred another snake or two, but those hatchling turtles probably wont be topped all year!!

The snakes don't know but the salamanders understand

One bad thing about starting the herping season so early in the year is that when the weather gets back to "normal", i. e. shitty, it's hard to readjust. Early spring weekends are supposed to be cool and rainy and that's just how they had become. Those handfuls of early April snakes were becoming distant memories.

We did some herpless walking here and there and got a few shots, like this chipmunk at the Arboretum-


And we were peered at (in secret) by a mallard (also the Arboretum)-


The last day of April, the weather reports were promising warm weather for the weekend. True herpers that we are, we tried a trek to Allendale after work. Arriving at the woods at 6PM doesn't sound to promising... doubtful on the squamates, but the salamanders shouldn't mind.

First up was a small Spotted Salamander, a species that never fails to impress me... especially when you consider that Allendale is within Boston City limits!

This little guy was way more animated than spotteds usually are... he was roaming around, dancing all over Andrea's hands and arms!


I found a gigantic earthworm... one of the biggest that I've ever seen. Of course, I had to handle it.


Humongous redbacks...


Daredevil leadbacks...


And more redbacks before the sun went down.



We managed an hour and a half on a Friday night, after work... hungry and tired. We are quite the intrepid herpers! But the real trek would be the next day...

April 12th 2010- last minute decision

It was the day after the Boston Comicon which was the day after a late night rock show and we were TOAST! I was sitting at the computer and was wondering what that bright stuff coming from in between the curtains was all about. Damn... it was sunny! Who knew?

I went outside to test the weather. Warm. Possibly herp warm. So we went to Allendale... close by and easy to make into a short walk if need be. We knew that the following weekend we would be out of town, so it was Nature Walk or (at least) a two week nature drought!

Our legs were weary as we walked those trails but we were greeted by some redbacks.


This guy was about an inch long...


We saw Paul Stanley's grave.


Digging through some gunk, I startled Andrea by saying out loud... "Oh my goodness..." Here's why!

What a nice Spotted!



Now THAT'S a fine hunk o' mander! Even this woodpecker was impressed!


Later, Andrea flipped a log and found another spotted and two small, nearly black sallies. We think they might have been leadback phase redbacks, but they were really cantankerous and ran all over. They were impossible to photograph and one dropped his tail really easily.



Our day was completed not with snakes, but with more redbacks,



and some Deer and Raccoon (or the baby from IT'S ALIVE) tracks:



A tattered Question Mark Butterfly capped the 3+ hour walk! (He can be seen in the far left of the deer track shot as well...)


I guess we had a little steam in us after all!

April 3rd, 2010- something new

The news of temperatures "nearing the Eighties on Saturday" had us all atwitter with thoughts of herping all week long! And a hectic week it was. The only real cure for weekly work stress? Nature walks!

We decided to try something new... a definite one-off; Houghton's Pond in the Blue Hills. Later in the year, this turns into a family-congested miasma of screaming kids and hairy bloated parents infringing on the wonderment of nature. But for the first weekend in April, it might prove to be A-OK for us. Besides, its trails connect to Ponkapoag, so there just might be some herps.

Fresh out of the car, we saw some painted turtles enjoying the hot April sun from a basking log. Legs back, these guys were into their turtle yoga but good.


This red-ear was in full yoga pose...


We flipped a log and found this guy... I thought it might be a variation of a redback, but he was nutty... running along my hand and leaping! A lively little golden fellow with a light blue tummy!


A beautiful Leadback!

Of course, there were some lovely Redbacks as well...



We found another of those golden maniac Leadbacks...


Now, Houghton's Pond, being a big family place, wasn't exactly screaming SNAKES to us, but we continued to see turtles, including this pair of juvenile painteds who made me crawl on my belly in the mud to get this shot...


While down by the water to try to get another stack o' turtles shot (that was impossible), Andrea said... "look- right in front of you..." I saw nothing until she said "Garter!" Oh yeah... right in front of me in the water was a beautiful, skinny high-yellow garter snake!


It was worth the double soaker to bring this guy in for some close-ups, such a beauty!


And the required on-my-glasses shot...


So we were psyched... lots of turtles and sallys and even a nice garter snake!

We made our way towards the car, but were corralled away by construction fencing. So, we cut through the wooded area. Andrea, who definitely had the snake eyes going that day, found this full fella making his way through the same area...


Because of the large meal in him, we didn't want to pick him up (and get barfed on) so Andrea just kept getting closer, snapping shots to get the ones best possible. Eventually, she got incredibly close, just 3 inches away.

In this shot, if you look closely, you can see Andrea reflected in his eye!


So we didn't even have to bother him for his close-ups! What a friendly snake!

So Houghtons Pond turned out to be A-OK, but we wont be going back this year, unless we do it on an overcast, non-beachy kind of day.

On the drive home, we were passing the Forest Hills Cemetery and figured... why not? Houghton's is small and we still had a little bit of wind in us. Then we farted and it was gone. But we walked around the Cemetery pond anyway.

A painted turtle greeted us.


Then we found a spot that was full of bullfrogs! Here's our first anuran friend of the year...

There were many others, but they were very wary and impossible to get a shot of.

This humorous stack of turtles were enjoying the sun... from top to bottom- redear, painted, redear, redear, painted!


Funnier still was this basking spot... turtles joined by a goose!!


Such a lovely, sunny day... even a bullfrog was basking on a log!


So yeah, April 3rd. Dig it. Good herpin' day! Too bad we both got a tick on us... mine was crawling up my leg. Andrea wasn't ass lucky. (That's not a misspelling...)