Went over to the neighborhood pond tonight because the frogs were sounding off exuberantly while I was chasing another subject back home (which you’ll see soon.) By the time I wrapped up what I was already doing and gave the headlamp a quick charge, the frogs had quieted down a bit. A spider was the first thing I photographed, but the second thing that I captured was a pair of eyes watching me from the woods, down low and too close together for a deer. With the help of the headlamp and by taking the softbox off the flash, I snagged a decent frame.
That’s a raccoon of course, or North American raccoon if you want to be specific (Procyon lotor,) but wasn’t a goal for the evening. Mind you, I’ll take plenty of pictures of raccoons if they’ll let me, but that’s usually far from the case, and this one was down a steep embankment and already spooked by my presence – I’d get nothing better than this.
The frogs remained mostly hidden – a couple of bullfrogs on the shore, and calls from both green treefrogs and Copes grey treefrogs wherever I wasn’t, but nothing presenting itself beyond what I’ve gotten a million times before. And then I spotted the snake.
This is typical for the area, especially in the water, because this is a northern water snake (Nerodia sipedon sipedon) – the first of any snake that I’ve seen this year, which seems odd even to me. I did a few frames, almost sliding down the steep bank into the water in the attempt, then passed further on in search of the frogs again.
On the way back past, the snake was no longer in evidence, but then caught up with my position as I was paused while observing an eastern American toad (Anaxyrus americanus americanus.)
In fact, there was a toad right by the water’s edge near me, while this snake began nosing closer, and I suspected she’d picked up the toad’s scent. All of this is taking place perhaps just over a meter from me; the snake itself was about half-a-meter in length – respectable, but far from the larger specimens which are twice that.
Sure enough, the snake started heading distinctly in the direction of the toad, and I was only armed with the Mamiya 80mm macro – no zoom, limited framing options, so I had to back off a bit and start adjusting the flash unit and exposure. It did not help that I’d shot dozens of flash images over the past couple of days and the batteries were starting to wear down, taking a bit longer to recharge between flashes. As a result, when the snake took a very abrupt shot at the toad, the frame that I captured was inadequate and not worth showing here. Not to mention that the toad leapt off and the snake missed anyway.
The snake did not give up, and nosed around the area for a while, just beyond my sitting position on the bank, before suddenly deciding to move further along. This image shows the way to distinguish the northern water snake from the nearly-identical banded water snake, because the markings of the northern break apart in the hind portion of the snake’s body; the bands remain intact for the banded water snake.
No sooner had the snake moved further along shore than another appeared, following behind. You can see the markings on this one are brighter and redder, which generally means little – there are a lot of variations within the species, to say nothing of time between molts when the colors get duller. But this one was enormously interested in coming ashore right exactly where I was – which leads to the video. Shot, unfortunately, on my piece of shit smutphone – I had not come armed for video, which takes a steadycage, a video light, and an external microphone to make it all worthwhile, even though it is many times better through the Canon 7D than through my Samsung. But this is what I got for the evening, anyway.
I worked further along just ahead of the second snake, and sure enough, found the first up on shore and just hanging out rather obviously, I was now sure that the first was a female and in season, and the second was a potential suitor. I also saw a third in the water nearby, but that one vanished after only a glimpse – not sure why it disappeared.
The brighter male wasted no time in coming ashore, and the female actually turned to face him, so quickly that I thought she might be about to chase him off, but she froze as the male began tracing his way down her body towards her tail (her head is buried in the weeds towards the top of the frame.) I’d seen this behavior last year, and am not quite sure of what it means, but I suspect it may be the way that the male ensures that he’s working with the correct snake before engaging in coitus; last year’s example eventually involved three snakes, and I imagine things might become confusing, but this is only a guess.
In short order the male reversed his path along the female’s body and they soon engaged. I shot no video of this part because a) that portion of their bodies was mostly obscured by weeds, and b) the smutphone is a very basic one (I have no need for anything fancy and won’t bother spending the money,) meaning that it has a wide angle lens that requires getting very close to a subject for decent details – three times closer, at least, than the Mamiya macro requires. I figured I’d try not to disturb them too much and just fired off a couple of frames on the Canon, then let them be. It was a worthwhile session for such a casual trip to the pond.