adult content

Warning! Adult Content! Of the geeky bio kind.

The past week has been extremely busy with lots of long days of field work. But occasionally you are rewarded by sights you have never seen.

Like snake sex. I've never seen snakes having sex. I've seen turtles 'occupied' twice which was pretty exciting, because you don't see turtles that often anymore, let alone two turtle in the act of making more turtles. But I've never seen snakes engage in the act of procreation. These are the Common Northern Watersnake (Nerodia sipedon sipedon). The larger snake is the female and the smaller one is the male. These were in shrubs in between a pond and a stream. The property owner proudly exclaimed that on a good day you can count 25 at one time. Huh.

See the three entwined tails in the middle of the picture? You might have to click on the photo to enlarge. These three were in a shrub overhanging the water all day. Seriously. All day....from at least 9 in the morning to 3 in the afternoon. This is serious business apparently. We were doing aquatic insect surveys in the stream right next to this bush in the morning. While I was writing down some data, I noticed the bush shaking. When I looked closer, I saw the snakes and laughed. How funny. What is that saying? When the tartarian honeysuckles a' rockin........ We tried not to bother them too much.

Here they are again all wrapped up together.

This was the pool area of the stream right where the three snakes were. As you can see, they have plenty to eat. The interesting thing was that all of this was going on less than 100 feet from a major road that sees 90,000 cars a day. And finally a shot of Moby Dick, the last remaining carp in the big pond. He must be a lonely guy. Just him and a bunch of snakes.