Crawling into 2020

Believe it or not (I don't), I am now entering the 11th year of keeping this blog. I don't know how long I'll continue it but for now, welcome to 2020.

Speaking of which, I have been ill pretty much for the whole year so things remain the same. We went out on New Year's Day to start the 2020 bird count but I was starting to get sick so we didn't stay out long. We just added a few common species, but it was a start. We didn't get out again, thanks to my bacterial infections, until Saturday, January 11th. The temps were going to be record-setting warm and we decided to peek at the dens. I was nearing the tail end of my sickness and Andrea was beginning the.... ummm... tail beginning of hers.

It was indeed lovely out and we figured we'd see tons of animals but that really wasn't the case. We saw one knucklehead, though, and a Northern Water Snake became our first herp of 2020.


We checked the other dens but nobody was out. Salamanders were also  absent. We figure that being fully underground, they didn't know it was so nice out. Plus, it was dry. We added a couple more birds. Here's #5, a Downy Woodpecker.


The next day, Sunday the 12th, was even nicer. It hit 71° which is a record. We hadn't planned on a hike but being sick, we didn't have any obligations, so we went out for another walk around the same spot. Fresh air and sun is the best medicine anyway, isn't it?

Sly's den hasn't had much action (for us) in a few years but this slim Ribbon Snake (First of Year!) was up grabbing some sunshine.

I was wondering if this was the new Robles, the large Ribbon that we'd seen at the end of 2019 but despite them both having a stub-tail, this one doesn't have the scarring on his back and is a good half-foot shorter.

Heading into the Valley, we just couldn't miss a big ol' lady Water Snake all stretched out. Andrea did a size reference.


She decided she didn't want a human so close, so she slithered slowly away (the snake, not Andrea), almost crawling right over our first Garter of the year. The Valley was hoppin'! (Or slitherin'!)

This guy was pretty Ribbony... made us do a few double-takes.

We carried on, hoping the Cottonwood Den would give us a few more sightings. Our hopes were realized. These two Garters were peeking out.

Can we get a closer look at how cute that is?

Andrea tried to stifle her laughter at the sight, even though snakes can't hear. It's just how we are.

A few feet above the periscope duo, this guy was being more secretive.


We went on to check out the Rock Wall Dens but they were empty. That's OK, we'd already had far more success than we should have. We were tired (hey, we're sickos) and headed back. We swung by the Cottonwood Dens on the way out and this Garter had emerged, but the others had all returned to their beds.

We thought it might have been one of the others but markings suggest a different animal. So, that makes a 5 Garter day!

OK, now I know this day was a sign of Global Warming and the planet is doomed. We all know that, unless we're idiots. But the joy and health benefits, both physical and mental, that we derived from an hour in the sun in January is nothing to be sneezed at. I guess it's taking advantage of a bad situation. It did the ol' heart a lot of good to see some noggins and a smiling wife.

Ending 2019.

Nature-wise, it was an odd year for us. Personally, I ruined it with my broken arm and later my pneumonia. But we also had family matters, crappy weather and EEE to contend with, giving us a lot less time in the field than usual. But we always enjoy any time we can out and see animals and we did see a number of wonderful creatures this year.

On December 23rd, Andrea had work but I was off. She urged me to take advantage of the warm (50°) and sunny day and take a peek at the dens. I did, though when I got there, it was still super icy and I doubted I'd have any luck.

But never doubt the tenacity of a snake...

This was a big, beefy female Ribbon Snake down in the Valley, stretched out on the ice. She has a stub tail and a few scars and might have been looking for some extra Vitamin D for her winter. I wonder if this is Robles, who we'd seen a few years ago at a different den site. "He" had plenty of scars and a tail ready to go.


While photographing her, I looked down and this feisty little Garter was actually striking at me!

Easy, cowboy... save enough energy to make it back underground!

Obviously, I worried all night that they didn't get back to their hibernaculums before freezing to death. Andrea had the following day off, so we went back and they were both gone. Either they returned to their winter beds or they froze and were eaten. Nobody was out that day.

Saturday, December 28th, it was sunny again though the wind was pretty stiff and it kept the temps low. We went to peek anyway, thinking there might be someone up. I'm very happy to report that our Ribbon friend was back in the sun of the Valley, getting as much vitamin D as she could.

I can't see any obvious injuries on her but her scars prove that she knows what she's doing, so I feel good about her survival. Could it be Robles? At any rate, I'm happy that Andrea got to see her.

Back behind the Valley, there are hills that get a lot of sun. I'd never inspected them before; I'd only been back to that spot to "look for Wood Frogs" but I decided to scan the terrain. There, about 10 feet up the hill, hidden but still in the sun, was a beautiful Northern Water Snake!

That was a hell of a nice way to end the year. I mean, this blog post has more snake species in it than most of my summer ones! That Nerodia face makes me so happy.

So 2019 is all but over, mercifully. I end with 101 birds (kind of a let down after my amazing start) and a few new lifers. We had many good days, saw the Boston lizards, finally got an EDB and got to see a few friends. Turtle Season was short and not many came in, which we'll say is a good thing.

May 2020 be wonderful for everyone.

2019 is winding down...

I've been neglecting this blog . So what?

We always say that we'll be ready to walk beaches on Thanksgiving Day. A lot of folks want to have family time, so we make ourselves available. And, of course, we got asked to walk Thanksgiving. The weather was supposed to suck again (though not as bitterly cold as last year's debacle). Cold and rainy and windy. We were also asked to walk the high tide in the middle of the night, so we booked a hotel nearby and decided to make a really tiring day of it.

High tide was at 12:30 in the afternoon on Thanksgiving. We got there on time and tried to hit the beach, but the surf was pounding into the dunes, well above any high-tide we'd walked before.

We walked the gut for a bit and found a few spaces where we could get to the "beach", or at least see where turtles might come in.

It was miserable. The rain kept spitting, even though the weather forecast said it was supposed to stop. The "gusts of 35 to 50 MPH" was a constant, high wind, enough to hold up my fat 215 lb. ass. And that surf was relentless. There was almost no beach along the first 2 miles of the Island. Needless to say, we saw no turtles.

The high surf was making the erosion pretty scary. I walked over these fallen piles of rock and clay to look beyond but Andrea said she could still see bits crumbling and falling as I was out there.

2 hours after high-tide and the waves were still smashing into the dunes and cliffs. We deemed it too dangerous to continue and turned back a little less than 3/4 of the way out. The point would have been completely underwater anyway.

We checked into our hotel and peeled off oursoaked clothing. We'd been invited to Thanksgiving dinner at the Sanctuary's dorms and I had to wear a pair of Andrea's stretchy pants because I had no dry ones. That's OK... everyone was cool there and I even got to dry my sweatshirt in their drier. It turns out that no turtles had come in, despite the heavy winds. It seems the waves churned so much that anything would have been pulled back out.

Dinner was excellent, talking with friends... Tim and Kim were there, so I got some good talkin' time in with them. A BBC film crew was there for a production they're working on and they had good stories. It was decided that, due to the super-high-tide, that the midnight walks should head out a couple of hours after high tide. Fair enough. We'd get more sleep that way. Lights were out by 8 PM.

We got up at 2 AM and got into our more or less dry clothes. The room's heater did a decent job on drying my pants. We bundled up and got to the beach at about 2:30 AM.

This was our first full-island night walk and it was pretty weird because all of our usual landmarks were gone. But it wasn't too bad. The wind had died down a bit and at least it wasn't raining. We saw a lot of this, though. (That's sand, not icy rain!)

We only knew we'd hit the point because a bunch of light colored birds took off, probably gulls and Eiders. Then we headed back. We found no turtles along the way. We didn't even see any wrack line. Everything had indeed been pulled back out. We got back to the starting point just as first light was starting to peek out. That's usually when we got there to start... it felt weird ending at this point.

Obviously, we had become pretty hungry by this time. Two (well, one and 3/4) long beach walks, about15 miles of wet sand and wind-fighting in about 18 hours... we'd earned a breakfast. We went to a nice place as the sun came up and talked about how I was about to write my first blog post with no animals in it! Then we got a call. They had a few turtles already and a few more coming in and needed us to drive a some to the aquarium on our way home. So, we ate up and headed over to the sanctuary.

One turtle was very interesting. It's a Kemp's Ridley, a massive one at that- almost 50 pounds! We usually get 3 pounders, or so. But more interesting was the fact that this poor turtle was suffering from fibropapillomatosis, a disease which causes tumors to grow. This turtle's tumors aren't too bad but it is the first case we've seen of the disease up here. It has only been seen on turtles in the tropics before. This was a special turtle, indeed. Add to that, a healed wound that looks like a shark bit a chunk out of the rear-left shell. This one is a warrior.

There was also a live Loggerhead waiting to go to rehab.

This guy was a little more active.

The new car got put to good use. I got it to fit more turtles and here we were, only putting two in. But it was over 80 pounds of chelonia, so we were glad the Corolla didn't attempt this move.

I was filmed driving up to get the turtles... wonder if I'll be in the BBC documentary!

We kept the temp at 55° for the 90 mile drive to the aquarium and dropped off our cargo. The staff was very interested in the Kemp's. They will (or already have, I haven't heard) perform surgery on the tumors and hopefully, it will make a full recovery.

We got home and napped. For a few days.

Because we're gluttons for punishment, we answered the call again for high tide the following weekend, on Sunday the 8th. It was an afternoon high-tide and the weather was pretty agreeable. Of course, we knew we'd see no turtles, but duty is duty, so we headed out.

I finally got to triple digits on my 2019 bird count, with #100 being Sanderlings and #101 being Dunlins. There were plenty of both out there.

Not many seals this time, either, though a few watched us from afar.

Nope, it was quiet and I had time to get artsy-fartsy.

It was a quiet and pleasant walk but the devastation from the previous week was very evident. This "island" wont be here forever and it took a huge hit. The erosion was epic.

So, that was that. No turtles had come in, so none had to be transported.

The light turtle year has continued. Only 289 as I type this (Dec. 17th). That is good and bad, I guess. Hopefully, it means they just didn't get caught in the cold and made it past the Cape and headed South. Anything that comes in from here on out will probably be dead. We'll probably get back on the beach this year (we're a favorite clean-up crew) but the hope of any live rescues is remote. Still, necropsy season is right around the corner and even the dead turtles provide a lot of information. Perhaps some will shed some light on this year's low number of strandings.

As a side note, it had been warmer and rainy the following weekend. Saturday the 14th was in the 50s! So on Sunday, December 15th, despite a frigid wind, we went to look for salamanders nearby, hoping to actually see a live animal. Well, we saw no salamanders but Andrea spied this female Garter Snake just outside her den, trying desperately for some sun. She only had intermittent luck.

Very healthy looking... "in good flesh" as my former lizard's vet used to say. I poked her to make sure she was still alive and she sure was. 

That was a nice bonus. Also, our 21st straight month with a Massachusetts snake sighting. March, 2018 was our last MA Snake-free month (though we saw a ton in Florida that month).

I hate Winter. And it isn't even Winter yet!

Stepping into the Second Season. Nov. 10th and 16th.

Back to the beach for us. Winds and temperatures were making it look like turtles would start washing in so we made an effort to be on the Cape, on our big beach at first light on Sunday, November 10th. We made it. It was going to be pretty warm but winds had been blowing and maybe some knuckleheads would wash up. At any rate, we needed desperately to do the walk, to get ourselves into shape for the season.

The beach was quiet when we got there (6 AM), the water tranquil.

We pretty much knew right away that we'd not see turtles in need, but we welcomed the walk and did a little birding.

It was pretty uneventful the whole way out. We went to the very tip, roughly 4 miles out.


It was out there that we finally saw our first seal of the year, a Gray.


Here's a cute Semipalmated Plover (#97).


As expected, we saw no turtles, even though the high tide was coming in as we walked back. One Kemp's was found on this beach later in the day (in the opposite direction) and luckily, somebody was there to rescue it.

The next weekend followed a week of very cold temperatures and wild winds. Turtles started coming in on Wednesday and many volunteers were  beckoned to walk during the high tides. We didn't get a call, as we live off-Cape, and we don't expect to get many this year. But we told them we'd be at our island at first light again, which would be at low tide.

It was a hell of a lot colder this Saturday morning than the previous week and very very windy. The low-tide made things tough as we had to scan the sand flats that were exposed. The enlarged shoreline presented a few challenges. I was looking for a dinner-plate sized turtle among a maze of rocks and seaweed.


We couldn't tell where the high tide had reached (at 1 AM during the night)... I thought it hadn't reached very high, as I could see the night-walker's return footprints down by the shoreline. But Andrea stubbornly stayed up higher. As it's good she did. Almost to the point, she yelled "turtle!"

I ran up and she'd found this stranded fella, obviously missed during the high-tide walk.

Now, we'd never seen a Green on our walks before so we knew this guy looked a little different, but couldn't comfortably call "lifer", especially since it showed no signs of life. We called him in and covered him up before continuing on. We were almost there.


As we neared the end, Gray Seals started to spy on us.


Almost there, Andrea stopped and urged me to look at the point... it was covered with seals!


Obviously, despite their curiosity, they got into the water, but stayed very close as Andrea walked by.

There must have been 60 or so seals out there!

They followed Andrea for a while as she started back.


We were asked to retrieve the turtle and bring it back to base, so since I'd neglected to bring a towel, I secured it in my backpack to keep it out of the wind. I put a heavy rock on the sled so the wind wouldn't blow it over. Dead or not, you have to treat them like they're alive.


I'm not going to lie... the walk back was pure hell. The heavy wind was right in our faces and the turtle/ rock combo was making me really work. I could feel the damn plate in my arm as I pulled the sled. We struggled up the eroding, sandy dune and got to the car, windburned, muttering that perhaps we really are getting too old for this. But we had a turtle, so we had to do it.

We got him back to the sanctuary, laid him out and had it confirmed that yes, it was a Green Turtle, the first that we'd ever seen on our walks. The "pinhead" is our new diagnostic for these guys.

Best of all, it had shown a little response to some testing... I even got a slight blink as I wiped some sand from it's eye (a test that had yielded nothing on the beach). It was alive. Barely, but it was alive.

There were no other turtles there as a batch had been taken to the aquarium at 9 AM. (It was now about 10:45 AM). Wait a minute... there was one other turtle there... a poor Diamondback Terrapin whose hibernation had been interrupted by somebody gardening!! He was not in a good mood.


Since the next turtle delivery to the aquarium wouldn't be leaving until 2 PM, and high-tide would be at 1:30, no more turtles would be going up on the day. We said we'd be happy to take this one to the aquarium on the way, since we actually pass the place on the way home. Calls were made, it was approved and we had our first turtle in the new car.


We kept it as close to 55° for the next 90 miles and dropped him off. Less than 5 hours from beach to aquarium. We don't know if he'll survive but we gave it our best shot. And now the new car has been properly sanded and still smells a bit like turtle. It's all good.

Getting Ready for Bed, 11-2-2019

Andrea and I had been wondering if everyone was back to their den sites since the nighttime temps were scraping the freezing mark these days. So, since we had just a little time before an afternoon band thing, we went to our local stomping grounds to check out the known den areas.

On the way, we saw a Redback under a rock. No frost yet, so this was still possible.


We got into the Valley of Nerodia and Andrea spotted a namesake snake... a gorgeous (if a bit dusty) Northern Water Snake stretching out in the sun. It was only about 45° but the sun was obviously warm enough.

Beautiful snake, easily 3 feet long. A yard of Nerodia.

The Cottonwood Den had a heartbreaking sight waiting for us... the very tree for which the den is named, a huge Cottonwood introduced to us by our friend Andrew, had fallen.

This tree was our signpost, our beacon in the woods to alert us to the Cottonwood Den that Andrew had introduced us to, a den site that usually delivers a stubborn Garter or two.

Undeterred by the fallen tree, this little Garter was sunning outside its hibernaculum.


On the way to the Rock Wall Den, we encountered another plump Redback.


The Rock Wall Den didn't show us anything until we were leaving to head back. This slim Garter was poking around in front of it.

That scale in front of the eye almost had me thinking we'd seen a Ribbon!

Heading out, we looked in on the Water Snake, who was following the sun. Just beyond Sly's Den (which has been empty for a few years now), this Garter was deciding whether or not to return to the underground.


Lastly, up at Roble's Den, this slim Garter was grabbing some last minute rays.


So, we had answered our question. Yes, snakes are all back to their Winter digs and will be there for the next 5 months or so. On sunny days, we will probably visit them until the Spring but our usual hikes have ended for the year.

Besides, we're back on the beach on Sunday.