The First Snake of the Year

It's been rather busy lately, with some insane birding experiences.  Before all that, however, four men set out into the woods and swamps of Lick Creek Wildlife Area after some salamanders:

I know there's only three in this photo, but someone had to be behind the camera, and that somebody was me.  We all carried sticks.  Most of them broke.  My stick didn't, but mine is also a titanium field hook that I was using to flip logs in an unsuccessful hunt for salamanders.

We did find these puffball fungi on a log, and poked them with the aforementioned sticks to release clouds of spores.  It's juvenile, but it's also impressive how many spores these fungi puff out!

Peeling back the bark of a rotting tree allowed us to see all the old spiderwebs hidden beneath. The marsh that this tree was in, pictured at top, was full of calling frogs.  It's the first time my ears have hurt from the loudness of calling frogs.  Ironically, we didn't catch or even see a single frog.

Meanwhile, strange larvae hid under the logs on the ground, though sadly unaccompanied by salamanders. I have no idea to what beetle these grubs belong.  I think they're Dendroides sp.

At one point, a member of our party found this little Dekay's Brown Snake (Storeria dekayi).  My first snake species of the year, the Dekay's did not want to be photographed!

It calmed down a bit, enough to flick out its tongue.  We eventually released this harmless little snake back into the leaf litter, and it vanished out of sight beneath a log.

The "Burned Lands", as I'm calling the burned over section of marsh (fuller details here on how I discovered this), have begun to recover, the tussocks of marsh grasses making for unique scenery.

While skirting the edge of the marsh, we came across the first blooming False Rue Anemones (Enemion biternatum) of the year, and as you can see in comparison to my finger, they're tiny!

As we crossed over the old Route 66 bridge back to our cars, we found a couple of Blue-winged Teal (Anas discors) nosing about in the shallows.

We all parted ways, and as I arrived at my house, a huge bird flew overhead.  The epitome of the Fifth Orchid (if you don't know what that means, see here), and a new yard bird for me, this immature Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) soared in one circle over my house before flying away.   While I may not have seen a whole lot then, that changed in the next few days.  Stay tuned...