Mid-November Find!

As we were wrapping up the journaling part of a school program this afternoon, I looked down on the ground and saw what I thought was one of those coiled hair tie things.  When I bent over to pick it up, I saw that instead it was a wee snake!  It was coiled up on a leaf trying to eke out some warmth from the rapidly disappearing sun.

Being the snake-o-phile (ophiophilist) that I am, I, of course, had to pick it up.

It was very cold, and didn't seem to mind me holding it.  I showed it to all the kids - who thought, of course, that it was poisonous.  One said "venomous" and I congratulated him for using the correct term. I wasn't 100% sure what it was, so I brought it inside and dug out my snake book.  Still not 100% sure.  The book doesn't really show juveniles, nor belly patterns, which, on this snake, were beautiful.

Upon closer inspection and some searching online, I confirmed that it is a juvenile northern watersnake.   What was throwing me was that it was a goodly distance from actual water!  And it did look a bit like a juvenile black ratsnake, which is a species of special concern here in MI.  So naturally I tried to make that fit.

Still, a baby watersnake out in a field in November...that's still pretty exciting.

Blue Racer

One of the best things about moving to a completely new area, away from all things familiar, is that there is so much new stuff to discover.  You wouldn't think that Michigan would be all that different from New York, but surprisingly, it is!

One of the many new things on my list of Things I Must See is the blue racer, a native snake that can get up to four or more feet in length.  Noted for being very curious, these serpents have been seen rising out of the tall grasses to peer at people who are passing by.  Who wouldn't want to see that?  And besides, it's blue!  Blue is just not a color that is terribly common in nature.

About a year ago someone brought a dead juvenile blue racer into the visitor center - a tiny, black and white spotted thing.  We placed it in a jar of alcohol to preserve it - very sad.  But I wanted to see an adult...and preferably alive.

Well, I got half my wish last night.  Toby and I were headed down the road four our evening walk, and I saw a snake on the shoulder.  It was obviously deceased.  But when I looked at it closely, I just had a feeling it was a blue racer.  It had crawled out on the pavement to warm up in the next-to-last nice day were were going to have, and someone clipped it with a car (or truck).  

I gently picked it up - the injuries were minimal - and carried it home.  This morning I brought it in to work to verify the ID, photograph it, and see if we could preserve it.

So, here it is:

The white chin/throat is one of the keys to identify this species.

As is the gorgeous pale blue coloring on the scales along its sides.

Gary figured the snake was three to four years old, based on the size.  Saddened to see the waste of such a glorious life, we found a specimen jar into which I could coil it.  We'll fill with alcohol had have the animal available for programming...although we'd rather see it alive.

Word to the Wise:  if it's a beautiful fall day, toasty warm with winter on the way, please be careful when driving down the roads.  Snakes of all sizes may be out sunning themselves, catching the last rays of warmth they can find before they slither off to dens to sleep away the winter.  Like turtles crossing the roads in the spring, try to avoid hitting the snakes.  If possible, assist them off the road so other vehicles won't hit them...although they'll probably crawl back out because that's where they want to be:  soaking up the heat from the sun-warmed tarmack/asphalt/pavement.

Quadrillium - and an Abundance of White

 Yesterday I joined a group of nature enthusiasts for a drive to Goll Woods, a patch of "virgin forest" in northern Ohio.

Goll Woods is a rare treasure - a large plot of land that was purchased in the days when the midwest was being settled, and yet the owner, Mr. Goll, chose not to develop this parcel.  It remains one of the few original patches of Ohio forest left in existence. 

Goll Woods is lowland forest, along the Tiffen River, which this day was still flooding some of the trails.  As such, many of the plants here like to have their feet wet. One of the trees that's quite famous here is the burr oak, which grows to significant proportions (you'll see one shortly).  Apparently one blew over recently and the rings, when counted, aged the tree to over 500 years!

Goll Woods is noted on the internet and in wildflower circles as THE place to go for wildflowers.  It was, unfortunately, a rather cool and overcast day, so many of the flowers were closed, but this stretch of the Toadshade Trail was just carpeted with white trillium!

And nestled among the hundreds of tri-petaled flowers,

I found this four-petaled one!  Would that make it a Quadrillium?

Here is a tally of some of the other flowers we found this day:

 Dwarf Ginseng

Ohio Buckeye (a tree)

Toadshade (a new flower for me) - one of the trilliums

 Jack-in-the-pulpit

(and lots of Jacks just starting to unfold)

Early Buttercup (very soft and fuzzy stem)

Large-flowered Bellwort

A white trout lily!

Sharp-lobed Hepatica

Dutchman's Breeches (we also saw Squirrel Corn)

Miterwort (poor photo - sorry)

Nodding Trillium
Update:  we have some debate among members of the group as to which trillium this actually is.  
Some say nodding (T. cernuum), while others say drooping (T. flexipes).  The way to tell these two very similar species apart is to look at a) the petals - on nodding trillium they are strongly recurved (they bend backwards), whereas on drooping, they remain pretty straight, and b) the anthers- on nodding they are brown and on the drooping they are cream-colored.  Of course, my photo is of the wrong angle of this particular plant to really determine either. 

This lovely garter snake was nestled in the leaves and I almost stepped on it.  What was very odd about this reptile was that it was VERY warm!  The sun wasn't shining, so this perplexed us mightily  Could it have been warming up from the decaying leaves?  I find this not too likely - decay wasn't happening that fast.  Might it have been a female, and she was warm because she was gravid?  The body was quite stout.  Garter snakes are one of the species that give birth to live young (the eggs hatch internally), so this might explain the stoutness, and maybe even the warmth.  Hm...looks like I need to do a little more research.

Here is Jean next to one of the HUGE old burr oaks.  

Admittedly, Jean is vertically challenged, but even so, this is one big tree.

Wild Blue Phlox

Spicebush

White Clintonia - we think.  If so, another new plant for me.

Wild ginger with an itty bitty bud just to the left.

We came across this mystery violet.  Very long spur (see below), no hair inside the throat.

 Jackie - any ideas?  You are my violet go-to person!
Update:  Long-spurred Violet (Viola rostrata) - thanks, Jackie!

Mayapples were everywhere, but not blooming yet.  

This patch had some lovely mottled leaves.

A few wood anemone were hiding among the spring beauties.

And Sugar Maples!  Not a tree I'd expect to see in a wetland, since they tend to prefer drier, rockier soils.  

I guess one just never knows what one will find when it comes to Mother Nature.

Not for the Faint of Heart

When one keeps animals, whether for pets or exhibits, one is responsible for keeping them fed and healthy.

At the Dahlem Center, we have several turtles, a couple frogs, and two snakes currently in our collection.  All these animals are obligate carnivores - they must eat other animals.  One of the things we keep on hand to feed them is goldfish.  Another is crickets.

Yesterday Mark was feeding the masses yesterday afternoon just before closing, and I was able to capture the action with the larger of the two garter snakes.

Morning Trail Walk

 The sun rose in a rose-colored ball of fire this morning.  I could see it peeking beneath the windowshade in my bedroom.  I, of course, rolled over and tried to catch another few winks of sleep.  When I finally hauled myself out of bed, the morning's blush was gone.

Although the day was not as balmy as it was yesterday, it was still too lovely to be stuck indoors all day, so about mid-morning I grabbed my camera and hit the trails.  I was in search of skunk cabbage in particular, and frogs, for I had heard that the former was starting to bloom and I could hear a cloud of frogsong in the distance.  Nature was calling.

The little stream that runs through the property is a constant source of interest...I seem to photograph it every time I walk by!  One of our volunteers was standing near the stream as I came along, and he told me he had just seen a rather large muskrat take to the water.  I'll have to keep my eyes peeled for it.

When I told Paul I was searching for the rumored skunk cabbage, he took it upon himself to show me right where it was blooming.  And there it was!

There were quite a few sending up their strange, prehistoric-looking flowers, each slightly different than the next in color.

Skunk cabbage, which is neither a skunk nor a cabbage (it is, in fact, related to Jack-in-the-pulpit), is our earliest blooming wildflower.  It may not look like something you'd want to grace your dining room table, and the aroma put out by this low-growing plant is certainly not one that is savored by most people.  In fact, the scent has been likened to that of rotting meat (of course, they say that about red trillium, too, but I never could detect anything disagreeable when I sniffed them).  The ground was a bit too damp today for me to get down on all fours and thrust my nose within the spathe (this flower doesn't have petals; the spathe, which takes the place of petals, is made from a modified leaf) for a whiff.  Maybe in a couple weeks.  Skunk cabbages put out this scent to attract their pollinators, like any good plant will.  In this case, the pollinators are flies.

But wait!  It gets even more exciting than that!  Consider the way this plant grows.  It sits there just waiting for spring to spring, and as soon as spring is in the air (regardless of the equinox), the spathe shoots upwards.  The growth is so rapid that the plant actually generates heat, which melts the surrounding snow (if there is any).  The dark color of the spathe starts to absorb the heat from the sun, and the cupped shape of the spathe contains the heat.  And it gets even better, because now the spathe generates a vortex!  Cold air rushes in at the bottom of the spathe, warms up inside, and as we all know, hot air rises, so upwards the warm air goes, taking with it the carrion scent of the plant's interior.  This is called advertising, folks - the call has gone out to all those insects that find the smell of decay attractive.  Pollination takes place.  Life doesn't get much better than this...or at least not for the skunk cabbage.

Paul and I saw a couple flies buzzing around, and I tried sneaking up on a beautiful red wasp, but the camera simply refused to focus.  I wonder which wasps are active right now...hm.

We continued along the path a short distance and I heard a rustle.  Then I heard some more rustlings. I looked down to see not one....

but two garter snakes.  We looked around some more and found...

a pair wrapped together in a loving embrace.  The smaller male had found himself a female and was bound and determined to mate with her.

As we continued to look, more and more snakes appeared!  Right nearby was an old log that Paul said was the likely hibernaculum of these reptiles.  In the winter snakes seek out cozy places below ground to sleep away the season.  Very often, whole groups of snakes will congregate in these hidey holes.  Many years ago, at my second job as a naturalist, I came across a hillside covered with emerging garter snakes - there were hundreds, all slithering down the slope.  The males are all in search of receptive females, and when one is found, it is not unusual for multiple males to try to claim her all at once.  Big balls of snakes are sometimes discovered by hikers in the spring.  Because snakes are not well-loved by most people, those who find these balls can have less than thrilled reactions.  I, for one, hope to some day encounter such a mating ball.

We continued around the trails, Paul pointing out to me where spring beauty, hepatica, gentians, and other wildflowers will appear as their seasons come into play.  We would our way toward the glacial pond, where the Cut and Dab Society is steadily making progress at eradicating invasive buckthorns, autumn olive and honeysuckle, and there we heard the frogs.  Forget the video from last night - this one is much better.  Spring peepers and chorus frogs were both in good voice this morning.

We had to head back to the office, though.  Paul had some birdfeeders to repair (a hungry raccoon wreaked some havoc last night), and I had work to do.  We saw the first butterfly of the season flitting across the prairie - it may have been a Compton's tortoiseshell (at any rate, it was orange and black, and it wasn't a mourning cloak).

It was good to get out, even if only for an hour.  I am eager to see what each day brings now that the equinox is almost upon us.

On Snakes and Shedding

Hooray for Herps!  Here's just one more reason why I love snakes:  they shed!

This is our little garter snake, brought in this winter from someone's basement.  We've kept it in an aquarium tank, filled with bark chips, a little log to hide under, and a small "pool" to swim in.  A couple weeks ago one of our staff thought the snake's eye looked cloudy - a sure sign that it was going to shed its skin.

A couple days later, the eyes were clear and that was that.  Hm.

Then, one of the naturalists saw the snake swimming in its pool.  Now, sometimes it will go for a dip to catch one of the tiny fish we put in the water - even snakes have to eat.  And when one eats, one grows.  Unlike people, snakes' skins do not stretch as they grow, so they must be shed.

Sure enough, the shed had started.  I shot the above photo last week - the molt had started.  But here we are a week later and it has progressed no further.  HM.  What could be the cause?  We evaluated our choices.  One - reptiles often need a certain amount of humidity in order to shed.  When conditions are just right, they will shed their skins in one whole piece, like this lovely carpet python skin I have from my days working at a zoo:

This could be why the little fellow was swimming in the pool - trying to moisten the skin enough to come off.

Two - perhaps the bark chips in the tank are too lightweight to give the snake something rough to brush against.   This is the second thing snakes need to successfully rid themselves of their old skins:  rough surfaces to scrape along.  These surfaces grab the skin and help peel it off.

One of the things I love about snake skins is that they are shed inside out.  If all goes well, the snake loosens the skin first around the mouth.  Then it rubs it off, peeling it off like you would a sock.  The shed skin will look like the ghost of its previous owner.  And not only does the skin show every single scale that makes up the snake's outer covering, it also shows the scales that are over the eyes:

Amazing! 

It's a shame so many people dislike snakes; they are fascinating creatures on so many levels!  They move without feet!  They CLIMB without limbs!  They smell the air with their tongues, and they "hear" with their jaws (they don't have ears - they feel vibrations with their jaw bones)!  They can unhinge their lower jaws from the upper to more easily fit their mouths around prey - and if that wasn't cool enough, the two sides of the lower jaws can also stretch apart in the front (think "chin") to further accommodate large food.  They can go weeks without food.  Some lay eggs; some give birth to live young.  They are soft to the touch, and make great accessories (I'm thinking while alive, not as skins that are converted into handbags, belts and shoes).  And to top it all off, they are terribly important at keeping things like mice under control.

So, the next time you see a snake, instead of trying to beat it to death, consider it in all its glory and send it your thanks for helping to keep our world in balance.