Herpy Birthday! 5-21-2011

The weather had sucked it BAD for a week... cold and rainy; not a ray of sun to be found. We had written off any hopes of herping over the weekend. My birthday was on Saturday and I've always wanted to catch a snake on my birthday, but the forecast was not on my side.

We went to an art exhibit with some good friends in the morning and were surprised by blue skies and... *gasp*... sun! So we made plans to spend the latter part of the afternoon in Allendale! (Because it's close and time was a concern.)

Walking home from the train station, Andrea showed me a Morning Dove nest that is always occupied by a parent. It still was!


We got home and changed and headed over to the woods. Just inside, we saw some caterpillars chowing down on a leaf.


Not 20 feet onto the trail, I saw Andrea scrambling and grabbing a handful of leaves... with a Garter Snake in it! Her first snake catch of 2011!




We put him down, but he still wanted to pose because he was so beautiful...


Further up the trail, I heard some rustling and found a chubby American Toad hopping along... our first of the year!



We got to a favorite part of the woods... a place with lots of old housing debris laying around and I saw this...


So I got to catch a snake on my birthday! He had some blood (?) on his mouth which makes me think he'd recently eaten. We handled him gently.


Excellent checkerboards on this guy!


Flipping also produced some Redbacks...


And a mouse!


At the pond, there were many turtles out basking, though very far away...



There were also some HUMUNGOUS Bullfrogs, including this bruiser!


Over near a spillway, we flipped and found our first Northern Two-Lined Salamander of the year!


I'm not sure he enjoyed being held like this, but it helped with the ID!

Andrea could see some red reflecting in the water in the distance and zoomed in to find this... a newly hoisted Painted Turtle butt!


We were having fun and good luck, so we took the long way out and managed to find the swampy area that we hadn't seen in a while. Because of all of the recent rain, it was very pondy! This Bullfrog was posing beautifully...


I was looking at other Bullfrogs and I heard a commotion at my feet. I looked down and there was a small Garter Snake striking at me repeatedly! It was pretty funny! I gave him every opportunity to connect, but he settled down once we started handling him...


He actually tried to poke his way underneath Andrea's watchstrap!

We were on a trail side flipping when another hiker came by and pointed out a Lady Slipper up off the trail. We hadn't seen it at all!

It's funny what you miss. We were zeroed in on herps and she spotted that flower at 30 paces!

We found one more Two-Lined on the way out...


I call that a pretty darn fun couple of hours! A great birthday was had!

Lucky Friday the 13th.

Mid-May and the weather blows... literally at times. Cold and rainy and lots more on tap. The only good weather has been on Fridays which I have off at the moment, but Andrea does not and I will not herp without her.

Friday May 13th was another instance of it being nice enough to go out, but Andrea had jury duty instead of work. So I stayed in. And fell asleep. At 4 PM she called and said she was free so I woke up and hurried to pick her up. And we went to Allendale. A couple of hours in the evening is better than nothing.

So, it was in the low 60s, but surely there'd be some redbacks and maybe even a spotty!

Oddly enough, we flipped some wood from the fallen down house (which has been partially dispersed) and found a cool Garter Snake! So we photographed the holy hell out of him!





So, we'd found a snake late on a cool day! Anything else would be gravy!

The gravy included... a redback...


our first Painted Turtle of the year...


and some fine looking Bullfrogs!



It should be noted that last year, we saw no snakes at Allendale and we haven't seen turtles there since the first time we found the pond 2 years ago! So I would say in was a successful- and lucky- early evening walk on Friday the 13th. (We were only out for about 2 hrs, too... very quick for us.)

Patriots Day April 18th 2011... too cool?

Low Sixties. Bleh. BUT, this gift holiday to the people of Boston is traditionally our first herping day of the year, so we wanted to get out... even though it wouldn't be the first.

We wanted to check out Boyden Refuge in Taunton to see how it fared the winter.

It was very cool... almost breath-seeing cool. We went through quickly at first. The weather was cool for us, but the redbacks were enjoying it.






If you ever got the feeling that Redbacks are the most common herp in our area, you'd be absolutely right!

It should be noted that the forest was very wet... vernal pools were plentiful and deep, popping up in places we'd never seen them before. We had to alter our usual trail. knowing that certain spots would probably be impassable.

This lovely olive Garter Snake made himself known to Andrea. He took a little bit of work to track down, but we got him to photograph pretty well!




His body was warm to the touch, so I guess he'd found a nice basking spot. Overall, the weather was warming up a bit.

Not far from him, we found a Geo Cache...


A few Redbacks later...



we found our first Green Frog of the year, hanging out in a vernal pool.


Heading back, I saw a flicker of movement and saw a snake tearing up an incline. I lunged and landed full-out on my stomach grabbing a fistful of leaves. Andrea said that there was a tail in my hand... I reached further ahead and had a Ribbon Snake!


Really living up to his name, this guy was pencil thin, but about 18 inches long, with a beautiful shade of copper-red mixed in with the black of his sides.




Not bad... 2 Ribbon Snakes already in 2011... we didn't see ANY all last year!

On the way out, I was flipping warm stones in the Fragrance Garden and was greeted by a very weird thing. A tiny, hovering thing with a long beak. Was it a tiny hummingbird? I'd never seen anything like it!

Turns out is was a Large Bee Fly:


New to me, though I guess they're very common! Moved like a hovercraft. Very cool.

Auf weidersehen!