A harbinger of spring....

One of the cool aspects of my job is the opportunity to work from home one or two days out of the week. When that happens, I spend my lunch hour with the dog at a county park about three miles from my house. The park is about 200 acres with hiking/skiing trails, a pond, a pavilion, the whole nine yards for a rural area. I usually spend the first half hour letting Bo just "be a dog" - sniffing around, marking, etc., on the trails while I walk and get some exercise myself - then, the second half hour I'll run him through some retrieving drills.

While we were out earlier today, after taking the trail around the pond, we veered off to another trail that's more "upland" in nature - it encircles a plot of prairie grasses, some of which have been recovering from a "controlled burn" from the Wisconsin state DNR last fall. Now, given that there are trees adjacent to the trail on the other side of the prairie grasses, the trail path is littered with fallen branches and twigs. This is normally no big deal until I saw a few of the "branches" wriggling as I approached them.

I stooped down to find, from my count, eleven Eastern Plains Garter Snakes (Thamnophis radix) on the prowl. The largest was about 2 feet in length, the smallest around 18 inches. Now, I've seen garters in the wild before, but never a group this size. I'm sure with the latest snow melt, and with the temps warming, they're not only coming out of their brumation, but are starting their mass courtship.

While Bo was 30 yards ahead using his nose for some other task, I got down on my haunches, and surprisingly, the snakes approached, as if to beg for a handout. It's kind of cool to see multiple tongues flicking at you, checking you out....without a glass box or plastic tub intermediary.

Winter has ended. Spring is here. Life is good.

regards,
jazz

That's pretty cool Dale! Are those the same species that you see on TV coming out by the thousands in Canada? :cheers:

That is really amazing Dale.

I always know spring is here when the mud dries up quick.



hana

Awesome Dale . Garters rock, they are such a neat, tough lil snake.

Starting to see robins, Dale see's garters and days are longer....Ahhhhhh c'mon Spring!

Very cool. I am very excited. Pretty soon it will be time to head to the surrounding mountains and deserts to find some of the cali herps. I really want to see a Lyre Snake.

mbdorfer said:

Are those the same species that you see on TV coming out by the thousands in Canada?

Click to expand...

From what little I could find Googling, Mike, you're referring to the Eastern Garter Snake (Thamnophis sirtalis); whether there are similar behaviors or even intergrades between sirtalis and radix is beyond me, but I would presume so.

regards,
jazz

Very cool happening! I love garters. Garter snakes are what got me into snakes in the first place. They're sweet, but they have spunk.

Actually the snakes in Manitoba that come out in May in the thousands are red sided garters - Thamnophis sirtalis parietalis. The ones we have had (captive bred) have all been incredibly "friendly" snakes. They tend to come to the glass to check you out when anyone is close enough!

Jo