It's the End of the Year and I Know It. December, 2018.

Turtle Season ended pretty much as abruptly as it started and Andrea and I found ourselves facing the dreaded Winter months indoors. But Mother Nature threw us a few bones during this last month of 2018 and we took to the trails for a few last moments of cold stupidity.

Saturday, December 22nd
With a warm saturating rain the night before and temps in the 50s for Saturday, we decided to make a trek to an Ambystoma-laden place nearby to see if any individuals were fooled into coming up. Yes, there has been plenty of frost and sub-freezing temps but you never know. Well, as soon as we hit the trail, I realized I was way underdressed. I was freezing and there was still frost under many logs. Andrea came through in the clutch with a pretty Leadback before we turned around.

Brrrr....

Sunday, December 23rd
We went to the Arboretum to look at birds. I added two more species to the year's count. This House Finch, snoozing above a feeder, is my last 2018 bird, bringing the year total to 108. Not too bad.


Wednesday, December 26th
We made a Day-After-Christmas jaunt out to Western Massachusetts (Hampshire County) to hit America's Yarn Store and check out a nearby stream that has Two-lines and Dookies. We got to the stream fairly late and noticed that it was much deeper and faster than we'd anticipated.


I was without net or observation tank so I had to stick to calm, shallow spots and hope for the best (Stream-side rocks would be no good... it was pretty cold and icy out there.) Finally, I saw a golden body and snapped a shot of this Two-lined Salamander.

I hadn't noticed the little 2-lined larvae body heading under the rock or the Mayfly larvae until I uploaded the photo.

Saturday, December 29th
 Never say die. It was 49° and sunny and we sought to end this rather shitty year on a high note. Of course, Mother Nature has had other plans in store for us all year long, so who knows. I mean, no Ribbon Snakes (what the hell?!), no Northeast vipers, no Greens... it has really been an underwhelming year.

So, with the sun up, we headed to our local dens in hopes of a knucklehead poking out of a hole. At our first stop, the Valley of Nerodia, we hit pay dirt. We saw the coils in the sun from 10 feet away... a beautiful Garter Snake.

I thought it might be the same specimen from 2 weeks prior but upon closer inspection, we determined that it isn't.


Even though our target was hit, we went on to look at the Cottonwood Dens. Sure enough, one Garter was coiled in the sun in that location, too.

This olive beauty has a bit of a scruffy nose so he might be out to grab some medicinal Vitamin D.

We walked on, checking a few more den sites but seeing no more animals. Heading back, we made one last pit stop, to check on Robles' Den. We hadn't seen anything up there for a couple of years but you never know. Sure enough, there was a coil warming in the sun.

Skinny Garter, that one is. Umm... wait... look closer...

It seems that with three days left in the year, we'd finally seen our FIRST OF YEAR RIBBON SNAKE!!! Dusty though he may be, this might be the most satisfying sight of the entire year.

And our last one.

May 2019 treat us all very well.

December Doesn't Have to Suck. 12-15-2018

Turtle Season is winding down; the turtles washing in are fewer, although some are still appearing. With mild temps on Saturday, we were ready to walk but we never got the call. So, we found ourselves with a rare free Saturday. Being the joyous time of year that it is, we decided to do some damn errands. Since it hadn't dropped below 40° the night before and it had been raining, we decided to take a quick hike through our local spot in hopes of a salamander or two.

It was pleasant, in the low 50s, and the sun was trying desperately to break through. Being the fools that we are, we decided to look at some known dens to see if any snakes were poking their heads out. The obvious spots were bare, as expected. In the Valley of Nerodia, I wanted to check a known den exit just to see if a Water Snake noggin was popping out. No... but when I looked down toward a trickle of water, I saw this.

It looked pretty frozen so I broke our cardinal den site rule and picked it up. Yup... pretty stiff. Dead. Until the tongue came out. It then coiled tightly into my warm hand.

I'm not sure what was going on here. Perhaps, this Garter left the den to go down for a quick drink and found it colder than expected. At any rate, it warmed up a bit in my hand and I put him back down into the leaves and left him alone.

Not a bad sight for December 15th.

We'd been noticing frost under logs so we didn't bother flipping many. Rocks were a better bet so we went to an area that we like and carefully flipped a few. Much to our delight, there were plenty of Redbacks there.




We didn't encounter any more animals out in the woods but walked on for a while longer. It did our souls (and colds) a lot of good to get some fresh air and nature. After about 45 minutes, we found ourselves back in the Valley of Nerodia on the way out. Our little pal had headed up the hill towards a known Garter den entrance.

I like to think that our gentle handling warmed him up enough to find his way back. Probably not but shut up... let me have some fun here.

That was that.

One more cool thing, though.

After some shopping, we were pulling into a strip mall parking lot and I saw a Raptor cruise over head and land next to a pizzeria. I drove into their lot and went toward the back where the bird had gone. I got my lifer Dumpster Hawk!

Actually, a Cooper's Hawk, #106 on the year. Probably rodent hunting back there.

Getting out of the house in December never felt so good.

Our Mission, Should We Choose To Accept It... 12-1-2018

Turtles are coming in at an alarming rate this year. Over 700, as I type this (Dec. 4th). Loggerheads have started coming in, even on "our" island. We made ourselves available for the weekend, which we always do. We got a call Friday to see if we could go out to the point of our island to retrieve a "floater", a device that measures tides and wind and is useful to see what natural occurrences are moving the cold-stunned turtles. We said OK... how bad could it be?

The floater was about 3 1/2 miles out. Hey, we go that way anyway.


The water was calm and we didn't expect many turtles. The sunrise was quite pretty. (We had left the house at 4 AM).


I added a couple of birds to the year on the way out but mostly, we kept our eyes open for turtles as we made our way along the beach. Here's an arty shot of Andrea doin' her thing.


Finally, we got out to where the floater should be. I walked up the harbor side, thinking it might be out that way. It was. I loaded it on to my sled and made my way back toward Andrea.

One thing I hadn't counted on... it was heavy as hell. The big canvas sail was soaking wet and sand covered and the whole shebang was over 100 lbs.

I parked the sled and continued, unencumbered, out to the point with Andrea. She had found a cold-stunned cabbage while I was dragging the floater over.


We found three deceased Kemp's Ridley's on our way out. They had been stuck in the middle for a while and were very dead. Out at the point, we watched Eiders and Gulls and wondered why there were no seals present. Or were there?


We headed back, gathering up the dead turtles as we proceeded to the sled. It saddens me that I feel that I have become desensitized. Four years ago, all of these dead turtles would have made me cry but this day, I was carrying them like schoolbooks, just trying to get them safely to the sled to wrap them up and drag them back. Bringing them in is just something that has to be done and we do it unblinkingly.


One more Kemp's was found, one that we'd missed on the way out. It too was dead.

It started to feel like I was single-handedly destroying the alive/ dead ratio on the year.

It was very slow going. I was moving at Andrea speed and my back was achin' before too long. Still, I tried to enjoy the beauty around me (as I carried dead turtles and a massive floater)...

Blue.


Sand painting.


We finally got the sled back (though getting it up the steep, eroded sand dune was quite the effort and I had to take an "I can't breath" rest for a few minutes) and took the load back to the sanctuary. Evidently, I didn't need to bring the sticks and sails of the floater back but leaving it there would have felt like littering. There were students visiting so the dead turtles were taken for dissection pretty quickly. The good news was, two live Loggerheads had come in while we were out there!


Our friends Tim and Kim were there and they had the pleasure of taking these ones to the aquarium. The top one tried to climb off of the cart while being wheeled to Tim's car!

We stuck around to make some pick-ups. We had to go back to "our" island to pick up 3 more Kemp's. When we got there, the woman was petting one of them hopefully but I could see from the car that they were all dead. We gave her and her husband the ol' "You never know!" but these three were definitely already gone.

Just as we were leaving to head home, a call came in from a beach in Dennis that we know and we decided to go grab that one before hitting the highway. I'm glad we did because the woman there had pulled a small Kemp's off of the beach and it was alive!

We took it back to the sanctuary, relieved that we'd ended the day on a live note.

We got home 16 hours after we left the house and I was toast. I went to bed at 6:30 PM and slept for 12 hours.

So, since Tim goes by the nickname of Box Turtle Tim, I'm thinking of adopting Dead Turtle Mike. It doesn't have the cachet of Tim's name but it seems horribly accurate this year.