You are approached by a friend

I got this lovely series of photos of Nyx coming towards the camera I thought I'd share.

Here's 2 of my kids! Right, hypermelanistic T.s.sirtalis, Left, Normal T.s.sirtalis.

Absolutely precious! Got to love a good garter!

Eastern Gartersnake Thamnophis sirtalis ssp. sirtalis Colubridae

Photograph taken on October 2, 2021, at Marmora and Lake, Ontario, Canada.

Went to a little zoo yesterday and was very excited to see they had one of my dream snakes. A blue Puget sound garter snake

Critter fact #123:

The San Francisco Garter Snake (Thamnophis sirtalis tetrataenia) is a beautiful subspecies os snake endemic to California. It is endangered

Curio is getting BIG.

She is also currently in time-out to give the other garter babies a chance to eat because she has pounded down SEVEN PINKIES THIS WEEK

Mountain Dew Code Red showing off how Long and Red she is today

Creature Awaits #213

Each week I plan to feature an amazing creature, admiring God's fantastic artistry. Hopefully it’ll brighten someone’s day to see something new and interesting if they haven’t seen it before. : )

(Stunning capture by skilled photographer, Natalie McNear (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0))

The California Red-sided Garter Snake

Scientific Name: Thamnophis sirtalis infernalis

Region: Coastal dunes, shallow waters and marshes across California in the United States

Size: About 22" (~55cm) long (average length)

Interesting Notes: This gorgeous snake, considered by many to be one of the most beautiful in North America, can easily be mistaken for the San Francisco Garter Snake. You can tell the difference if you remember that this snake is shorter, more slender, and has black and red blotches along its sides instead of the plain black and red stripes of their San Franciscan cousin. It is also interesting as it is a viviparous snake, meaning their embryos develop in eggs within the mother rather than them laying eggs externally.

Venom Snake 🫡

Ready To Molt by kevin moore Via Flickr: When snakes shed their skin, a milky fluid accumulates beneath ocular scales, causing their eyes to appear blue and cloudy. The fluid acts as a protective layer, helping with the shedding process. After 3-5 days the blue phase ends, and the snake sheds its skin (1-2 weeks). This Common Garter Snake was in a field of Goldenrod, almost four feet off of the ground.

California Red-sided Garter Snake (Thamnophis sirtalis infernalis), family Colubridae, found in California, USA

Photograph by Tim Spuckler

I was misting the mantids tonight and Luna came to say hi

(image heavy)

🥚<3

San Francisco garter snake!

(Thamnophis sirtalis tetrataenia)

Garter Snake Thamnophis sirtalis Colubridae

Photographs taken on July 28, 2023, at Marmora and Lake, Ontario, Canada.

I was so, so lucky to meet a very special trio of snakes for a class I'm taking on methods in field ecology. One of my two professors is a specialist in garter snakes and was kind enough to bring three different species in for us to compare in person and observe up close. The first was the gorgeous common garter snake, Thamnophis sirtalis, pictures above. She was so calm and well-mannered!

Next was this tiny (by comparison) T. elegans dude, a western garter snake, who was wary of the camera but very patient about being passed around by a group of excited college students. He matched my classmate's sweater perfectly!

Finally, an endangered and incredibly precious T. gigas, the giant garter snake. She's about half of her maximum adult size, so a giant indeed! She musked and peed a bit but for the most part this gojira-faced beauty was pretty chill. We got to observe a full work-up for her including documenting records and microchipping.

She's one of the last of her species. Despite Herculean efforts by her protectors and conservation experts (mostly just one man and his dedicated team), this is a very difficult species to observe in the wild and their habitats are disappearing faster than their need for prioritization of protection in a given area can be assessed. These snakes rely on riparian habitat near rivers, which is also unfortunately a favorite for human development. At this time we don't know how exactly many giant garter snakes are left or whether their current populations are stable.

Today we got to visit their marshland habitat and watch these three go back to the place where they were caught. It was a huge honor and something I'll carry with me forever.

Day Date at Spruce Knob-Seneca Rocks National Recreation Area, Part 1. Most couples would probably equate a "date" to a nice dinner out and a Marvel adventure movie, but Blake and I, being hopeless nature fanatics and aspiring satyrs without hooves, equate it to mean "putzing around in the mountains". The timing was perfect: the haze from the Canadian wildfires, which has been choking most the US Mid-Atlantic and Northeast for the past week, had mostly moved on, replaced by a crisp blue sky with a light breeze.

From top: the view from the Rich Mountain Overlook on Old Route 33, heading toward Harman; Blake communing with the mystic creek chubs in Gandy Creek, one of the best brook trout streams in the Mid-Atlantic region; cow parsnip (Heracleum maximum), a mildly phototoxic beauty that Native Americans relied on for food and medicine; a forest composition of false green hellebore (Veratrum viride), ferns, wild geranium (Geranium maculatum), and golden Alexander (Zizia aurea); a close-up of golden Alexander, a lovely, spring-blooming member of the carrot family; the wetlands complex at Spruce Knob Lake; shining ladies' tresses (Spiranthes lucida), a spring to early summer-blooming bog orchid recognizable from its bright yellow labellum; bunchberry (Cornus canadensis), which can be easily mistaken for a spring-blooming forb but is actually a dwarf dogwood; and a feisty eastern garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis sirtalis), whose saliva contains a mild neurotoxin that is deadly to its prey but harmless to humans.