Targets. How Do They Work? 9-8-2017

We both took Friday September 8th off. We wanted to hit the Brimfield Antique Show.  Our last time doing this was in July of 2014. That time, we also went to a close-ish park to look for the elusive Black Rat Snake, endangered in Massachusetts. That was our plan this trip as well, but this time we were taking with us some specific location advice from our pal (and one of the few readers of this blog) who had seen seven Rats in one trip earlier this year. (Thanks, Dom!) The sun was bright, the temps were in the high 60s and we were feelin' good.

We got there at about 11 AM and almost immediately ran into a chatty groundskeeper who asked what we were looking to photograph. Snakes. He gave us the exact same location as Dom had. So, we headed in, found the spot and scoured. No snakes present. That's OK, our nearby explorations got us a few animals. A flip of some discarded wood presented us with three neonate Garters, only one of which stayed put for a photo.

This one was a ferocious bookmark.

A Pickerel peeked out at us.


Andrea flipped a small Redback, our only one on the day.


Since we were already on a different path than we'd hiked on our previous trip, we decided to continue along, taking a trail that would keep us near water. Last time, we went up the mountain here and were eaten alive by mosquitoes. That, unfortunately, was my most vivid memory from that trip. That and Efts. Speaking of newts, Andrea saw this guy walking through a damp area.


This "soon" American Toad was tucked in, planning evil deeds.


We walked deep through the woods, marveling at the beauty around us. This was such good habitat for so many creatures.


I had startled a Bullfrog and as I stood there hoping to see his head pop up from the pond, I looked down and saw this other Bully at my feet.


A Wood Frog hopped in front of me and presented a real challenge for me to photograph. This will have to do.


It dawned on me that we were starting to rack up a big species count! We already had photographed a Pickerel but this cutie needed to be captured on film... err... disc.


I looked back and saw Andrea had lunged  for something.

It was a tiny Peeper.


Another pond area was filled with Bullfrogs.


We had done a large loop and found ourselves going past the "Snake Spot" again, but still, none were present. We decided to go check out the lake, after hitting the rooms of rest. I did flip another neonate Garter nearby but he was speedier than my camera.

We headed up the path as we had three years ago, deciding to look around the lake but not head up the mountain where we'd donated so much blood to the Mosquito Benevolent Society last time. (We had ZERO bites this time out.) Our first sighting was this flipped, jet-black American Toad. Beautiful.


A swampy area looked like it should have plenty of turtles basking but it wasn't until we were almost at the end when we saw this one... a smug-looking Snapper up catching some overcast rays. It's a rare treat to see them up basking.


Nearby, a Painted Turtle had the same idea.

And BOOM, that was ten species. We couldn't be disappointed about missing our target; we'd had a very good hike anyway. We looked around the lake, saw a few Pickerels hopping about, and decided to hit the road and go look at antiques. We vowed we'd come back more often.

On the main, familiar path back to the car, Andrea asked if we could just poke around one last spot that we were passing. It was an open area that was getting some of the intermittent sun. We went up and looked around. I was approaching a log with the thought of flipping it for salamanders when I saw this...

I called to Andrea that I'd either found our first of the year Racer (I know, right?) or our first of the year and first ever Massachusetts Black Rat Snake. A closer look revealed the keeled scales of the latter. And, I mean, it's pretty obvious now but from a distance, who knew? Deep in the blue, this is about a 4 1/2- 5 foot Rat Snake. Right there in a spot we'd looked around on our previous visit.

So that's how it feels to hit your target. We'd almost forgotten. We left and hit the antique show, fleet of foot. For a little while. Then we tired and headed home, happy with our eleven species hike, one of which was the rare (in MA) and beautiful Elaphe obsoleta obsoleta.