The weather only got
worse the next day, so Sunday was spent driving to We started off by
checking out arrays of artificial cover, figuring our best chances for
finding snakes in the chilly morning would be under sheets of tin lying in
the sun, but all we found were Lowcountry Mambas (as Steve refers to
Racers).
By afternoon it was
warming up so we switched tactics and began to walk burns. The technique is to wander a section of
forest recently cleared by a controlled fire, looking for basking critters
that have emerged near the charred stumps.
On one occasion I glanced into an opening and almost got excited when
I saw a pattern of black and yellow (Diamondback?!), but it turned out to be
a shy Box Turtle half hidden in the stump hole.
Hognose Snakes, on the other hand, were completely
exposed, simply lying out in the open on the black forest floor. Here’s one exactly as found:
Up until the previous year I had never seen a
Hognose in the field, but on this trip we found five. Their elaborate defensive displays ---
puffing and hooding, then rolling around in dramatic death throes --- are
well known, but what I hadn’t appreciated until
seeing different Heterodons was how
their individual responses can vary. For example, this one recoiled when disturbed, followed by lots of
curling up and hood spreading, but it never attempted to flee or feign
death.
In comparison, as soon as the Hognose on the left realized it had been detected, it just rolled over and died. Over and over again. The one on the right, however, was
determined to escape with little puffing or posturing. Whenever I blocked its path the snake would
reverse direction and continue to crawl as quickly as possible to get away;
even when touched, it did not “die”.
To see a brief video of a Hognose wildly
writhing around to play dead, click here. Not all the snakes we
found were on the ground. A peek
behind bark revealed this Scarlet Kingsnake on the trunk of a pine tree.
The warming trend
continued, providing us with the first road-cruising opportunity of the
year. A bit before dark
Mike jumps from the car to confront a feisty Garter Snake. A moment later he’s
back in the car, reeking of musk --- a clear victory for the snake --- but
Mike is smiling with perverse satisfaction as the new season is officially
annointed.
Into the evening and we began to encounter
Copperheads, one of the most common snakes of Lowcountry Carolina nights.
Amphibians were also beginning to call, and I was extremely pleased when this particular frog hopped in front of us, a first-time find for me.
Unfortunately, the warming trend also worked against us. As the following few days worked their way into the 80s it became apparent that the Rattlesnakes had left their stump holes. Instead of staying close to their underground winter sites, where they could be found basking in the open during the spring emergence, higher temps had given the signal that it was time to seek a meal and a mate, and so the snakes dispersed. We did find one Canebrake under tin, a new snake that added to the sample size, but Diamondbacks completely eluded us. To confirm our belief that they had scattered, we did track a radio-tagged specimen, and as suspected, it had traveled far from its hibernaculum to take up position under cryptic cover.
Of course, sometimes you just get lucky, which is what happened when I stumbled upon --- quite literally, I almost stepped on it --- this young Canebrake on the crawl.
But my favorite discovery was finding this Copperhead tucked up against a log. Once we realized the snakes were more likely to be hunting than basking, we shifted our search image from stump holes to horizontal edges along the ground, where sit-and-wait predators might be coiled in ambush position. So I rounded this log and visually scanned its length, and right there, exactly as I had imagined --- exactly where it’s supposed to be! --- was this beautiful snake in its own natural setting. And satisfaction for me, more than finding target species or scoring big numbers, comes from that rare experience of a perfectly composed moment.
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