First things first... the weather was pretty shitty all weekend, following the SNOW we got at the end of the week. The sun was straining on Sunday and we were lucky enough to find a Redback in Andrea's Mum's yard, a lovely Lead phase.
So, Monday was Patriot's Day, a Massachusetts holiday. We were both off and the weather was supposed to be sunny and warmer (low 60s). Since we'd only seen one solitary snake in all of April thus far, we went to a place in Plymouth County that we'd either score at or have our hearts broken. Both can happen at any moment.
We got there fairly early and hit a gas-line trail. We saw a bunch of Redbacks right away, not the easiest animal to see in this sandy place, but the temps and moisture was just right and we saw a ton of them, of all colors and sizes.
After this flip, I decided to put a moratorium on them so this blog post won't be all Redbacks!
The vernal at the end was in good shape. We saw some Bullfrog tadpoles present. On the way back, we saw this Painted Turtle getting ready to cross the path. Where he was headed, we had no idea.
Our next stop was the bog and right away, we saw that it was full of frogs. Plenty of Bullfrogs...
Looks like some Spotted Salamanders have been here, too.
Another little Bull.
Plenty of Green Frogs were about as well.
Ah, sweet, sweet verdancy!
A couple more Bullfrogs.
It is great to have the frogs back!
But where are the snakes? Even with great conditions, we've been striking out. We went on the the next stop.
On the drive in, we'd seen dozens of turtles basking but since arriving, it had clouded up a little and we hadn't seen many. This pond had a few Painters up still, however.
This guy gave no shits about a Black Duck being all up in his grille.
We debated walking through an open field. We'd seen a Ribbon in it before, so we headed in. Right away, we were thankful because we saw our first Black Racer on the year!
We were able to catch him for closer inspection.
We set him free and watched him scurry off until we lost sight of him. Continuing on, right around where we lost sight of him, Andrea saw another Racer take off. The same guy? We don't know. But Andrea made a very good point. It's their breeding season and there could well be horny Racers all over this field! Sure enough, we next encountered this massive one... about a 5 footer.
It doesn't matter how big they are or what their reputation is... they're still super derpy-looking. Check out this one's chin freckles!
Now this was more like it!
We added another Racer to our count...
This one had a Kirk Douglas thing goin' on... not the abusing Natalie Wood thing, the chin cleft.
Heading back to the main trail, we saw the ground rumbling... an American Toad was nestling in to the soft earth.
Back out at the pond, Painter Action had accelerated. I took this shot through the trees and thought there were two turtles. Upon uploading it, I see eight in the picture! Five noggins in the water.
We took a side-trail to check out another field to see if any more Racers were about. We saw another nestled American Toad just off the path.
The field was snake-free and we decided to not go up the main path any further. As the year is still young, we're still getting our bodies used to multi-mile hikes and, let's face it... we were gassed. But turning back turned out to be OK because we saw a Ribbon slither into the brush on the way back to the car. This was the best I could do:
Well, I hate to pick up everything I see, but this derpy face was worth it.
And that's that. We did hit another pond area but there were too many humans about for there to be any animals. We did check the tarp that had a stash of baby Snappers under it last Fall. They were long gone. Hopefully, they weren't eaten and we'll photograph them in the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment