3 Ring Circus (May 14th through 16th)

We've been hoping to do more after-work herping this year so it didn't take much coaxing from our friend Teá for us to take a quick Thursday night hike through Cutler. We all had one thing on our minds... first of year Milk Snakes. Tough, but not impossible to see. We only had a short time before darkness and we got there at about 6:15 PM... perfect for these dusk dwellers.

I'm going to cut to the chase. We saw only one herp... we flipped a beautiful, yearling Milk who was as feisty as he was beautiful.


^Nom!


It's so rare that we actually find our targets that I wasn't quite sure how to feel. I decided to feel happy. We also found some caterpillars that Teá explained was a very uncommon find in this part of the state... some Hemileuca lucina, the New England Buck Moth.

We all considered the trip a success.

The next morning (Friday the 15th), I was off from work so I headed over to Fowl Meadow after dropping Andrea off at the train station. I wanted to try to see a few herps waking up. It was dewy as all get out when I got there at about 8:15 AM. It was cool but the sun was warming up. Birds were singing like mad but I dared not look up for fear of missing a frog or snake. The first herp I saw was a water Snake heating up on top of a clump of grass.

She is one battle-scarred, cyclopean beauty and she could use a shed.

I went in deeper and the mosquitoes got heavy... really heavy. I mean, I could wave my hands and feel myself smacking dozens of them in the air. I thought they were following me until I realized the cloud was solid the whole way. I dared not stop. In fact, eventually I just said to hell with it and turned around and headed back out.

As I got back towards the front, the sun had begun to dry up some of the dew and the 'skeeters lessened but I'd had about enough anyway. I saw one Garter Snake on the way out. He posed in a nice serpentine S-shape for me.


Our Saturday plan was to hit Ponkapoag Pond... a longtime favorite spot that we hadn't been to since the snow melted. Teá had to cancel but we soldiered on alone. Our target? Ringnecks. We still sought our First of Year.

We started off with some Redbacks, the second of which posed way better than the first, nutty one.



Our favorite vernal pool was buzzing with tadpoles... we think they're Wood Frogs.




A small Pickerel Frog hid in plain sight.


Elsewhere, a gorgeous Water Snake warmed up for the day.


That's a perfect Nerodia.

As we approached the dam, darkness set in. No, it was sunny, but there was a fuck-ton of kids being unruly, throwing rocks and sticks and tramping through one of the finest Water Snake spots on the pond. Their camp councilors had absolutely no control over them. We approached gingerly, finally settling on the opposite side of the path, hoping we could photograph some thankfully-deaf snakes. I had a shot but one councilor came stamping through the grass and scared off a snake. "Oops". I was quite rude to her. Another councilor came over to see what kind of snakes we were looking for and I remained pretty pissed... especially since the distractions had made us lose a small Ribbon and Garter.

Mercifully, they moved on. We saw a Painted Turtle that a birder with good binoculars pointed out.


And I saw a Red Admiral that had seen better days.


Worst of all, at one spot, I heard a whoosh in the grass and went up a hillock to peruse it... and stumbled on a basking Garter. He slid off into the rocks with nary a photo. I thought, "Oh well, there are plenty of Garters out... we'll get another."

But we never did...

We found a stunning Leadback but he wanted no part of being photographed.


Andrea made an awesome flip next... our first Eft of the year!



We took a look into the bog but, as expected, it was damp and buggy and it wasn't long before there were submerged boards.


We hunted our asses off for Garters for a while. We came up empty. Andrea found some hugging Redbacks.


And a solo guy snorting pollen.


I flipped a Two-line near a stream.


We were at an area that we call Ringneck Hill; it was our real destination of the day. We flipped and worked for a while, then Andrea hit pay-dirt! She called out "twins of Ringneck" and held up two very feisty individuals.

Pose? They would not!

One might be eggy.

A nature shot just wasn't going to work.


Within a couple of minutes, she flipped another, smaller Ringneck.

This guy was much more cooperative.


Nice! Targets obtained. I went to check the stream one last time before we moved on and this beautiful, small Green Frog was posing on a rock.


And that was the last herp of the hike. We checked the dam again before leaving, thinking that the 4 hours or so since the brats left was long enough, but no herps had returned. So, that missed Garter photo loomed large, leaving us with but 9 species instead of our coveted 10.

But...

That night, we visited our friends who live nearby. We never get to see enough of them and they're kind enough to let us inspect their garden wall; a wall that supports a healthy colony of Dekay's Snakes. We flipped 6 in a few minutes... here are five of them.

^she might be with-snakelet.


^the rare pretzel-morph.


Now that's what I call a good start to a weekend. Targets hit, animals photographed and happiness achieved.

What's New, Hampshire? 5-10-2015

Our Mother's Day plans were to take Andrea's Mum to the New Hamster Sheep and Wool Festival and meet my kid and her kids there. Everybody bailed on us. So we went on our own. We always enjoy fondling yarn and seeing alpacas that look like Q-tips.


While eating our apple crisp on the fairgrounds, my mammal #6 for the year, an American Red Squirrel, bounded along behind me. He stood up and looked cute long enough for me to get this shot.


The temps had climbed super-high by noon and when we left the Fest, it was into the 90s. On a whim, we decided to drive over a few miles and look for Bear Brook State Park to see what joys it held. It wasn't quite as close as we thought and it was $4 per person to go in, but the brook itself looked great and we headed in.

It was tough to get to the brook but it was a lovely walk through the shaded woods. We didn't, however see many herps. In fact, our sole animal was this Redback.


We spent about an hour and a half walking trails and then went to the park's money-taker in the parking lot and said what we were looking for. Ponds with frogs and snakes and turtles and stuff. She pointed us in the right direction (the one I wanted to go in in the first place) and we found the first pond. There were guys fly-fishing there, but no herps. But the pond drained into a brook that was just on the other side of a small hill. We explored.

We saw a small salamandery thing on a rock in the water. I couldn't figure out what it was. But then, we started to see a lot... they were Spotted Newts and they were gettin' jiggy wid it!



I scooped up one and he showed me his package. Yep... that's breeding-season, male newt junk.


There were dozens; a few couples and many males looking for a love connection.


^Nice tail!

These two were engaged the entire half hour that we were there watching the orgy. Looks like a neck-job to me.


One guy kept swimming against the current coming through the spill-pipe (with arms and legs back like a Gator), relaxing and floating backwards, then swimming forward again. It was pretty funny.


We moved deeper into the place, to the campgrounds. A very friendly guy working there suggested we take a walk near the pond and we did just that. There was an overflowing puddle that was filled with small, black tadpoles... probably Wood Frogs.


There were also a few small Bullfrogs enjoying the puddle.



But what we really wanted to do was head back to Massachusetts, to Essex County once again, and take a walk along a rail trail in Methuen where we saw 21 Garters in about 2 hours last year. So that's just what we did. But we got some pizza first.

We got to Methuen at about 5 PM but it was still in the high 80s. No problem. We almost immediately flipped a Garter under a rotting railroad tie. While I was carrying him out to the path to try for a fake in situ shot, I heard Andrea fall behind me. I asked if she was OK, but she had lunged for a second Garter so we settled for a twofer hand shot!


This place is ridiculous... we flipped many Garters and they were sliding away left and right. Here are a couple that we caught for pictures.



Not worried about missing any (because they were so plentiful) we just settled for flipping tarp and the "low hanging fruit" rocks. And trying to photograph them as we see them. Here's how that worked out...




Squeee!

The only other herps we saw were two flipped Redbacks.



I added Mammal #7 with this Eastern Chipmunk.


Heading back, we flipped this ornery guy...


And then, to top it off, we gathered up a proper Mother's Day bouquet for Andrea.


The place is so amazing. We plan on taking more trips out there, not just for the multitude of Garters (we saw twice as many as we got photos of) but for the turtles, frogs and Water Snakes that are surely there. We saw some of them last year but we need to spend a whole day there. Excellent birding is present too.

So that was our Mother's Day. Not exactly as planned but wonderful none the less.