Caught (and released) a big fish
Caught a rare fish! Bull chub aka Nocomis raneyi
Found between the James in VA and the Neuse in NC. I caught this one on the James just below the fall line. Everything else from that day was pretty more typical (smallmouth bass, redbreast sunfish, and white perch), so this was a fun find! This is the 124th iNat specimen and the only one logged anywhere near RVA. As always, the fish was held for just long enough for pics and then gently let go back into the river. Caught on a small circle hook dredged through some shaded ripples with a pinched nightcrawler.
Some kinda coral mushrooms and what I thought waz baby lion's mane, but apparently isn't. Not pictured: a buttload of boletes and some possible chantarelles.
I met some good boys today.
A couple of bugs from my recent trip to the Rachel Carson Conservation Park. ID help would be appreciated! (I think the first is an aberrant Pyrrharctia isabella but I'm not totally sure. No idea on the second.) Both were found among a grassy field in central Maryland in the first week of September.
Rough green snake (Opheodrys aestivus) 16 September 2016 Maryland, USA
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Bochum, Germany by Melanie Thoma
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Artist’s Temporary Decaying Art Brings Enchantment To The Forest
British sculptor Andy Goldsworthy is known for his phenomenal and temporary, installations which involve using natural elements, ranging from sticks, stones, leaves and twigs and anything that grows out of the earth. Sharing a special connection with the land ,which he celebrates in all his sculptures, Goldsworthy shows the world that nature cannot be contained, but only its beauty can be held on a canvas for precious few moments before the land recalls what it once grew.
Source: landscape-photo-graphy.com
My favorite shot from my hike yesterday!
Northern black racer (Coluber constrictor constrictor)
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圓光寺#05
Enkō-ji, is a Zen Buddhist temple located near the Shugakuin Imperial Villa at Sakyō-ku, Ichijo-ji, Kotani-cho, in northeast Kyoto, Japan. It is famous for its fall foliage and Suikinkutsu [wiki]
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mabelmoments:
A strange bird showed up in Larry Ammann’s backyard on Jan. 14. Clearly a cardinal, it had the bright red plumage of a male on its left side and gray, female feathers on its right.
“I had no clue how on Earth something like that could happen,” said Ammann, a professor of statistics and a wildlife photographer who lives in a suburb of Dallas. “It was a learning experience.”
Ammann and the biologists he consulted concluded the bird was most likely part female, part male. Creatures with this condition are called gynandromorphs. They are genetic anomalies: Some cells in their bodies carry the genetic instructions for a male, some for a female. While this gender-bending also occurs among insects, spiders and crustaceans, birds like this cardinal have raised questions about how sex identity is determined among some animals.
continued
A note about the source. I don’t have the resources currently available to me to find the scientific journals quoted to read them myself (NERD) but I think this is fairly interesting~
Source: livescience.com
Sorry for not posting today, but I was REALLY tired. Here’s my report of yesterday!
So we went to the first park, but it was kind of disappointing. The water line was really down and the bridge over part of it was closed. We did end up rescuing an Eastern Box Turtle (Terrapene carolina carolina) which was trying to cross the road on our way in! We also spotted a few turtles of indeterminate species, as well as a really neat juvenile American Five-lined Skink (Plestiodon fasciatus) and a massive amount of small toads.
We then went for lunch and headed to the second spot. This was where my dad had seen some snakes before, two Northern Water Snakes (Nerodia sipedon), an Eastern Garter Snake (Thamnophis sirtalis), and a Rough Green Snake (Opheodrys aestivus). We were hoping to see a snake or two, but not all that assured.
We ended up with a snake count of FIFTEEN!
We first checked a place my dad called the snake hole, a small wooden plank bridge over a creek leading from a lake, where he had seen the two water snakes before. I immediately spotted one peaking out from under the bridge, and then just kept spotting more. There was one small Northern Water Snake, probably a yearling, as well as four adults of varying sizes. We watched as one slithered into a big pile of logs and brush, another swam into the lake, while the other three eventually either swam into brush in the stream or just stayed sunning themselves until we walked away.
On the way down the trail, I saw a snake I couldn’t identify slither into a bush, likely another Northern Water Snake. We then headed down to an area of tidal beach to just walk around. Within a minute of getting to the beach, another Northern Water Snake slithered into a pile of driftwood. He then slowly peeked his head out to look at us and telescoped. I went to take a look after laughing and watched as he calmly slithered away towards the woods. We walked a little further and came upon a tiny hatchling of the same species, definitely from this year, right next to the water. I thought at first he was dead, but then saw his tongue flick when I nudged the sand beside him. We later saw he had slithered on a bit, leaving the same slithery tracks that covered the beach. There easily could have been tracks from hundreds of hatchling sipedon. We saw one more large adult slither into beach detritus before heading back onto the path.
We then saw what I believe was a hatchling Eastern Garter Snake right beyond the path to the beach who ran for the bushes. We made our way out to the old crumbled pier, then back. On the way back, I saw one snake I could’t identify go into the brush, then another Eastern Garter who was just laying there beside the path as we walked by. He was likely a yearling and very fast.
My dad and I both figured the snakes would be gone by the time we made it to the snake, hole, but we were wrong! A smaller Northern Water Snake sunned itself the whole time (likely asleep) on a rock on one side and another adult stayed in the brush on the other side. These could have been the same snakes as before, but I’m going to count them anyway. The sunning snake didn't move an inch, and was posed like something out of a nature magazine.
Finally, we saw one Northern Water Snake swimming through the lake on our way back to the car. We also spotted two beavers, one in each lake, which I think my dad thought was the coolest. I couldn’t get over those snakes though!
Overall, it was a great day! I walked over 12 miles (the Sudowoodo in my Pokewalker was very happy!), and had a great time. I also visited my mom in the hospital and had some great food. I’m totally exhausted today and covered in mosquito bites, but it was very worth it! Hopefully I’ll have time to import and edit the photos I took before my convention next week. I’m definitely doing this again soon and making it a point to go herping when I go down to Louisiana in June!