I guess the only thing that will bring me back to New Jersey outside of early spring is the promise of ratsnakes (Pantherophis obsoleta), even though I don't ever seem to find any on these ratsnake-specific trips.

I would have gone somewhere in PA, to a hilly State Game Land I've been wanting to explore more, or to the mountains to check in on some rattlers, but my knee is still not itself (hope to have that fixed soon) and flat terrain seemed like the best idea.

So I went to a nice spot at the edge of the Pine Barrens where Chris has seen several very nice, very black (I like them really, really dark), black ratsnakes.

The usuals made their appearances, first in order of size the black racers (Coluber constrictor), in this case two snakes that were both preparing to shed, and so not at their prettiest. I got a photo of one under a board. It looked skinny as well as ugly, so I decided to just let it be and snap a quick shot without grabbing it:

From Online Edits

The other one was sunning itself in high grass, and in spite of its opaque eye shields (a milky fluid gathers under the old layer of skin before a snake sheds, and this includes the clear scale over the eye, obscuring their vision) it slipped away before I could get a good photo.

I saw some fence lizards (Sceloporus undulatus hyacinthatus) and a Fowlers toad (Bufo fowleri) but got photos of neither. The five-lined skinks (Eumeces fasciatus) were out in full force. I think I saw four scampering around in the sun. The first one I found, though, was under a board, and when I lifted the board it went for the nearest cover it could see - my shoe:


Here's another on a tree:

I sort of found a ratsnake. I had reached the end of my walking route there, feeling that old familiar feeling of regret at yet more time wasted in New Jersey, when I looked down to see a shed skin. Here it is pulled out of the weeds and on an old piece of wood:


You can tell a lot from a shed snake skin in good condition. Shed skins end up stretched out and otherwise expanded compared to the original owner, but I could get a rough sense that this was a decent sized snake - at least three feet long, I guessed. The pattern remains a bit in shed skins, and this one was obviously solid and dark on the back and sides, so it that narrows it down to big, dark snakes: racers and ratsnakes, maybe a kingsnake, but I think some chain pattern would have shown through for a kingsnake. The shed had a little pattern on its belly - dark coloration bleeding in from the sides of the belly to obscure light coloration in the middle of the belly scales, which would rule out a solid-black-bellied racer:

Another feature you can discern in a shed skin is the surface of the scales. Some snakes, such as racers, have smooth scales, while others have keeled scales, with a little ridge running from front to back through the middle of each scale. Black ratsnakes have such keels, which you can see if you look closely in this photo from three years ago:

Now note the keels in the shed skin:


I had seen no live ratsnakes, but I found the skin somewhat satisfying. A ratsnake had been there.

At least the site is pretty, a little more pleasant to my eyes and feet than the sandier heart of the Barrens. Here the trees are well spaced with a carpet of grass and moss, making it easy to walk without getting snagged by briars. Maybe the canopy is relatively closed, but I enjoy the cool shade, as opposed to that dry heat radiating off the sand and leatherleaf in scrubbier sections of the Barrens.



I should probably have closed with those landscape shots, but I there is one more thing that can bring me back to New Jersey - blueberries! I don't care how much you like whatever special blueberries you can get at your favorite farmstand, nothing beats the real, wild deal. In this case both low bush and high bush (seen here) were just coming into season, and I ate as many as I could reach:

After those two gaping, ferocious gartersnakes (Thamnophis sirtalis) shots from the last post, I wanted to post a more peaceful, gentle garter image. I found this one under a mattress with a brown snake, and the garter seemed to sit there asleep while I snapped a photo - click on the thumbnail for the full size photo, and please excuse another awkward image thanks to Blogger's weird uploading orientations.

From Online Edits

About a week ago it hit me that I haven't paid much attention to my favorite cemeteries for a long time - about a couple weeks, with only one trip to Mt. Moriah in the previous month. I guess this has to do with my injuring my knee, but I'm quite capable of walking around at this point, so on Saturday (June 27th) I made a point of heading over to the Mt. Moriah Cemetery to look around.

The one trip I had made was surprisingly unsuccessful - a morning trip that only turned up a garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis), which was nice, but it wasn't a brown snake (Storeria dekayi).

I was greeted by walls of green everywhere on that trip - always astounding to see how much the vegetation can grow in such a short time. I had trouble finding some cover objects that had been sitting out in plain sight two weeks before. On this weekend's trip I had the same reaction. All our recent rain has fueled another round of green. Dig these photos of the cemetery:




Here's a groundhog that didn't seem to notice me until I got relatively close, but still not quite close enough for a good photo:


This trip did turn up some brown snakes. I'm still kicking myself over two I let get away; I'm supposed to be good at this by now. My error was in lifting a rock with one hand while still holding my potato rake with the other, so that it wasn't free to grab the two plump females before they could disappear into the high grass. When you're looking under cover, even if it's the 100th object you've lifted, make sure you have one hand free.

Here's a nice little one that I did manage to get my hands on, and for some reason Blogger insists on rotating it 90 degrees:



I was happy to find the four brown snakes, but more interesting to me were the four garters that I saw. I only saw one in two years of herping the cemetery, but this season they're everywhere. I should start marking them too. I'm not sure why I'm seeing more - it could be random luck, it could be that the wet year is encouraging them to come up from Cobbs Creek, it could be a good year for the night crawlers, who knows.

Like all good garter snakes they gaped and bit with vigor, smearing me with feces and musk so I could smell them for a day after.

The other cemetery I frequent is the Woodlands, between the tracks along the Schuylkill and where the trolleys go underground around 40th and Baltimore. I run there (or ran) weekly, and each time I'm there I stop and flip cover for brown snakes. I've been seeing them pretty consistently, so on Sunday, still sidelined from running, I decided to go on a walk there instead, and this time with a camera to snap some photos of those brown snake regulars.

Of course I didn't see any to photograph, but I did come across a deer. This is interesting because up until recently (I forget if it was last year or the year before) there was a stable little herd living back there. They were quite pretty, and it was fun to spook them on my runs. Still it was not a good place for deer, and as they multiplied I was sure they'd strip the cemetery of all leafy vegetation and at some point crash through a windshield on University Ave. Apparently the cemetery management agreed and culled the deer. I had heard rumors it was going to happen, and then one morning there were no deer.

This doe was oddly tame (just like her predecessors). I'm used to deer fleeing as soon as they see me, but she kept watching me from about thirty feet away. I worry that someone is feeding her - a setup for the whole cycle to repeat itself.

I've written several times about our herping at a large, privately held marsh to the west of Philadelphia, in the piedmont landscape of farms, forests, and (increasingly) McMansion subdivisions. I would thank the landowners by name if I felt comfortable letting on to where the site is. Scott and I have felt incredibly lucky to be involved in the conservation of such wonderful habitat.

So what exactly have we been doing to earn our keep? Well, we've been generally herping the site, recording what we see and when, getting a feel for the herpetological biodiversity of the property. We've also been in touch with the PA Herp Atlas Project and, with some guidance from Tim Maret, who runs the Atlas Project, we have paid special attention to spotted turtles (Clemmys guttata).

Now, spotted turtles are considered a special find wherever you are, but in Pennsylvania they seem to be harder to find than elsewhere in our region. Last year we found all of four at the site, and that was in a lot of hours of searching plus a trapping day with Tim and one of his volunteers. By the end of the season Scott and I were scratching our heads and wondering what we were doing wrong. Maybe the population was just less dense than we were used to seeing.

This year started slowly as well. Scott caught one at the end of March, about when things get rocking in South Jersey, for example. but that was it. We put in some really intensive effort on some of what we thought were absolutely PERFECT days (sunny, air temps in the 60s, water cooler than that) and came up totally skunked. It was the kind of herping that makes you want to take up bird watching, but we're stubborn even if we're not too bright, and eventually we started getting better results.

In particular the season seemed to turn on Earthday weekend. Shoshi picked up three basking turtles like they were just chilling there waiting for her, and then the next day Scott found a half dozen crawling around at high temperatures (high 80s) in the middle of the afternoon.

May rocked, and by the middle of June our totals had hit about 35, and not a single recapture among them. We were concentrating on one section, maybe a couple acres, but still finding them in other sections when we tried.

As we examined turtle after turtle, measuring, photographing, and then organizing all the notes and reviewing photographs of turtle after turtle, each in an identical position, but, because of the consistent positions, easily notably different from all the others, with its own scars, spot patterns, and texture, we felt a growing sense of familiarity. These weren't just anonymous turtles in yet another vernal pool explored, these were individuals we were getting to know, in a community of turtles we were learning a little better with each additional turtle we found. I suppose this is a joy of proper field biology that we dilettantes miss out on, a sort of meditative immersion in the world of the animals you're studying. I enjoy it immensely, whether with brown snakes or spotted turtles, and I hope to continue these projects over the coming years.

In general, the turtles at this site are not pretty. See the NJ road cruising post below for an example of a beautiful spotted turtle, smooth and black with bright yellow spots. These, by contrast, were often extremely rough, rugose with highly sculpted scutes, and often with barely any spots at all.

That rough texture is a sign of youth in spotted turtles. All turtles (as far as I know) add a new layer of keratin (the substance that makes up our hair and nails) to the base of their scutes each year, but over time they get worn away or flake off. So, for some species such as spotted turtles (box turtles too), a rough turtle is usually a young turtle. That guideline correlated well with other features of aging. The smoothest turtles were usually the ones with other scars and shell damage, and no small turtles were smooth.

I think the season is pretty much over at this point - not because the turtles have necessarily stopped moving (they might estivate - summer version of hibernate - if it gets too dry), but because the vegetation is too tall and thick for us to see them easily. So now it's time for a spotted turtle review!

First, here's the first turtle of the season, a really rough one. Note the lack of spots. This plain, rough turtle looks a decent amount like a bog turtle (Glyptemys muhlenbergii), but on closer examination was definitely a spotted turtle:

Let's go in increasing order of apparent age from here. So, first up, the cutest turtle in the world!




Here's another youngster, maybe three years old?


...and another, a little older yet, maybe seven or eight years (based on counting the layers of the scutes, or annuli)? Note that this turtle is still not full grown. It also has an irregular scute on its back:



Here's another young one, what I'd call full grown but with a little more growth left:

...and another:


Those rough scutes are starting to wear away on this one:



Old man:




This one is probably really old, worn smooth and shiny:


Old as dirt:


Another turtle geezer:


I'll wrap up with what I think is a cute series. I know it might be anthropomorphizing to write that individual turtles have distinct personalities, but I'll go out on a limb and suggest it. Here are four turtles showing ranging from shy:




...to a little less shy:
...to a little feisty:
...fightin' mad:

Readers of this blog will already know that I am not a fan of road cruising. Driving back and forth on roads at night hardly strikes me as a way to get in touch with nature; it's perhaps an efficient way to find herps, but finding a critter on blacktop or gravel in the beam of your headlight is like finding it in the middle of a parking lot, a surface that could be in front of a Walmart or next to City Hall. Where's the forest? Where's the marsh? If it's a ratsnake, where's the tree branch or the ledge, the patch of sunlight on leaf litter in the forest (not that I haven't resorted to cruising for ratsnakes in my more desperate moments)? If it's a snapping turtle crossing the road, where's the mud or the image of the head and top of the shell breaking the water, that moment when you look down in the water and realize that no, that's not a rock?

But I hurt my knee on that grand timber rattler trip, and now I can't go hiking for a little while. Road cruising might suck, but it beats sitting at home.

Luckily in late spring/early summer we have more options than just evening road cruising for snakes. Morning road cruising for turtles is way more interesting, especially when you're checking roads through marshes for nesting diamondback terrapins (Malaclemys terrapin).

There are a few weeks in early June that the dry land of the great state of New Jersey hosts some of the most beautiful turtles in the world. They're out there in the marshes the whole time, bobbing around with the tides, munching on crabs and mussels, basking when they get the chance, but we can't get to them.

That's probably for the best. Terrapins don't do very well on land, or more specifically they don't do well around cars. Female terrapins get massacred up and down the coastline of the eastern and Southern United States as they hike around, looking for the right patch of dirt to dig into. For more information on terrapins and their conservation challenges, check out the Wetlands Institute's terrapin conservation page.

All of this is not meant to suggest that we're taking advantage of a bad situation, but we spent the morning of June 5th driving around southern coastal New Jersey (I think we covered at least three counties) looking for terrapins.

Early on we encountered this pretty little male spotted turtle (Clemmys guttata) in a freshwater flooded woods island in brackish marshlands.

And on another road this little snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina), who didn't snap at all (another one later in the day certainly did), but looked thoroughly freaked out.


Soon thereafter we helped this chunky female box turtle (Terrapene carolina) cross the street in a somewhat suburban area. I wonder if she was on her way to nest. As a little reminder, always remember to take the turtle across the street in the direction it's heading. If you move it back the way it was coming from, it'll try to cross again.




The thing was, we weren't seeing any terrapins. I kept trying new roads in new sections of marsh, and all we saw were more turtles of other species like this mud turtle (Kinosternon subrubrum)


...and this painted turtle (Chrysemys picta)


...and lots of birds. We see Canada geese all the time, but Jen adores them, and I do find them entertaining sometimes. Here's a geese with goslings fleeing from the car.


I should mention the crabs - little critters that just for a second make you think you're seeing a reptile, maybe a super fast turtle.

Jen also enjoyed the mammals. There's a rabbit back there by the edge of the grass:



Too often I flip just one more board (or check one more ledge, or in this case check one more road), then one more, then one more, ad infinitum and burn through time I should have spent doing anything else. I should know better, but this time I decided to take one more sweep down a road we started off on.

It's these rare times I find something on that time-wasting 'last' pass that keeps me going through all the failures. Check out this big girl:


We also passed this one nesting. We took a quick shot and headed back to Philadelphia: