There’s little doubt that fall is here. Warblers and other migrant birds are trickling through, the raccoons, groundhogs, and fox are feeding more heavily, and, as mentioned in a previous post, snakes are moving about more. Here’s just a few more signs of the season before us. And, not necessarily a sign of fall but [...] Read the rest of this entry »
Posts Tagged ‘Common Snapping Turtle’
Snapper at Large
July 14th, 2011Last week a very large Common Snapping Turtle (Chelydra serpentina) was seen in the Black Bear Compound, and again the next day, at the Red Wolf Exhibit. Was the snapper attempting to expand its knowledge of mammalian behavior? No, I think it was probably off looking for a place to lay eggs or even a new [...] Read the rest of this entry »
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Battling Behemoths
April 26th, 2011It’s spring and the snapping turtles are feeling the urge. I’m not sure if these two snappers ever connected, whether they actually got together and mated, but one of them was seen hauled out on a rock later the same day. For a somewhat blow-by-blow description of what mating snapping turtles go through to reproduce, [...] Read the rest of this entry »
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Some Early September Sights
September 16th, 2010As you well know (if you’ve been following this blog) caterpillars tend to show up more frequently from late summer into fall. It’s not so much that there are more of them, but that the larger species are maturing, their frass more visible on the ground beneath the trees and shrubs that they’re feeding on, and [...] Read the rest of this entry »
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Treefrogs Unite, Snappers Attempt to
July 27th, 2010On July 16th as Ranger Kristin and I walked through Explore the Wild, a tiny, grayish frog hopped out onto the pavement. The tiny frog was a Cope’s Gray Treefrog (Hyla chrysoscelis). The little frog (about 15 mm) had only recently morphed from a tadpole after having been deposited in the Wetlands as an egg, [...] Read the rest of this entry »
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Snappers bask and Water Snake appears
June 15th, 2009Green and Gray Treefrogs continue to call from the Wetlands and other locations around the Explore the Wild and Catch the Wind loop. The brief, lamb-like calls of Narrowmouth Toads have been heard at both the Wetlands and the pond at Flap the Wings in Catch the Wind. Good luck finding one of these tiny [...] Read the rest of this entry »
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Snakes Mingle, Snappers Tumble, and Yellow-bellies Hatch
April 15th, 2009Each day that I visited the Wetlands during the first half of April I was able to locate from four to six different Northern Water Snakes. Towards afternoon of each day, there were at least four of these variably colored snakes on a near horizontal Black Willow trunk no more than a dozen feet from [...] Read the rest of this entry »
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