A Hard-Fought FOY. 9-17-17

Mid to late September and we still hadn't seen a Green Snake, a Hognose or a Racer. We had been wearing out our Plymouth County spot during the summer in hopes of seeing one of those three species, so we'd been cooling it for a month or so. But since the season will be all-but-over in a month, we trekked back on a cloudy Sunday morning in hopes of some luck and First Of Year sightings.

We got there at about 11 AM and the temps were in the mid-60s; that was fine for our plans. We hit the spot we've tentatively been calling "Redbell Land", named after an amazing spot I had as a kid for Storeria occipitomaculata back in New York State. With one flip of a log, Andrea solidified the name of this spot.

She's a bit in-the-blue... can you imagine how beautiful she'll be after a shed?


Orange Striped Oakworms. There were literally thousands of them crawling everywhere. We swerved to avoid them on the road, we had to watch our step as we walked and we flipped them under things. Luckily, these bountiful, beautiful caterpillars are native.


Pine needles and sand... where else would you find a Redback?

(They are so adaptable that I'm never surprised to find them... even in this seemingly non-salamandery habitat.)

Tracker Andrea spied some more snake tracks but we never saw who made them. This guy was in a hurry.


Talk to the hand, 'cause the Fowler's don't understand.


That was just our first stop and even though we were only out for about a half hour, we were soaked with sweat. The sun wasn't even burning bright; it was just 1,008% humidity. We glugged some water and went to the next area to look around.

I jauntily marched down the trail towards a bog while Andrea was bringing up the rear. She quietly said my name. I said, "I walked right by one, didn't I?" I had. She had seen a tiny bookmark, a new hatchling Hognose Snake sitting in the brush just off the trail.

We are most likely the first mammals it has ever seen so I'm glad it had the instinct to flatten out. Of course, it made it look silly as hell.

How big? Not too...

So we finally had our First Of Year Hognose. That was a long time coming.

We watched the wee one crawl off and then went down to the bog. We immediately saw a Bull and a Green Frog watching us.



This large Green looks like he smells something bad.


There were many Bullfrogs being Bullfrog stereotypes, sitting on lilypads.



This small Painted Turtle was obviously enjoying himself.


A beautiful Pickerel Frog jumped in front of us and we realized that in just over an hour, we'd photographed 8 species.

And that was about it on the day.

We went to two more spots, one to check the ponds, and saw some distant Painted Turtles basking and a couple of frogs but we couldn't get usable pictures. When we got out to look around the last spot, we realized that we were absolutely gassed and dragged our feet along the trails as best we could. We saw a few Fowler's Toads and plenty of mushrooms. Andrea snapped a shot of this perfect egg-cup.


But running out of gas isn't so bad when the first hour was so full of excitement and fun. We'll still push ourselves while we can and whether we see animals or not, we're giving it our best shot and enjoying our time in nature.