Two Thursday Lunch Hours in April... the 10th and 17th

Andrea had Thursday the 10th off and we were out doing errands. Since it looked pretty nice out once we were mobile, we thought we should peek at the local dens. I didn't have my camera with me but Andrea had her phone just in case we saw something.

The Valley and Robles' Den didn't have anything and we thought maybe our instincts were wrong. Then I flipped a Redback and all was well.

We headed towards the Cottonwood but decided to poke around our new spot, the Ditch Den. I swear, they are just too easy there! There were plenty out, we think we had nine. Here are some...

We made it back to the Cottonwood Den and there was one guy peering out at us.

On the way back by the ditch, we watched them going about Garter Snake business for a while and think we counted ten this time. Garteriffic, for sure.

Nothing like a bonus day looking at snakes.

The following Thursday, Andrea had work but it was nice again so we said... why not? This will likely be our last time visiting the local dens since most snakes are up and many are starting to move about. But we said what they hey. (I took my camera.)

The Valley of Nerodia was living up to it's name. A chubby gal was out and a small, dusty fella was peeking out of the tree-root entrance (and exit, of course) to a den.

Robles' Den was empty but a bright Redback saved the trip up the hill for us.

Was it just too easy to look at the Ditch Den? I mean, how many times over the years have we walked past it... 100s? Now that we know it's there, it's like shooting fish in a barrel. Or like photographing snakes outside their hibernaculum. At any rate, sure enough, there were many periscopes for our amusement and pleasure.

We went back to the Cottonwood to look, too, but all was empty. But of course, we couldn't just walk past the Ditch Den on the way out without peeking again. We were rewarded with this shot of 6 Garters peeking out! (The 6th is under the second from the right in the back row... he'd be the lower left corner of a square made of Garter noggins on the right side of the picture.)

Weekday sightings are always very welcome. And weather was supposed to be pretty good for the upcoming weekend! (It was... two forthcoming posts this week...)