When I had this as a weekly topic last year, there were times when I was struggling to have something to feature, and punted it once or twice, though at others I had subjects waiting in the wings, and overall didn’t do too bad at all for finding something new for every week. I like this way better though, in that I can feature things as I find them and not stick to a schedule.
Poking around late last night (as in, right before it became “today.”) looking to see who was about and not finding much of anything, I finally spotted a patch of paler green within the foliage of the large Japanese maple in the backyard. It was about the right hue for an anole in night coloration, but didn’t look quite right for it, and a close examination confirmed this: it was not an anole.
I was delighted at this, because it’s been – holy shit, has it been ten years? – since I last photographed one, so I’m sure you’ll understand my pleasure. This is a rough green snake (Opheodrys aestivus) coiled up asleep in the leaves, because that’s what they do – they’re very arboreal, and growing up we always called them green tree snakes, since you’ll rarely find them on the ground at all. This perspective simply wouldn’t do, however, so I crawled underneath the tree to see more of it.
I made a small mistake in doing so, however, because I was used to stalking the anoles at night and they pay little attention to the headlamp bobbing around or the flash going off. But snakes don’t have eyelids and thus sleep with their eyes open, and from experience, I’m fairly certain that a distinct change in light wakes them up right away. Normally, this is throwing your shadow across them, but here it was likely the light passing in and out of the shadows of the leaves, so this little guy was awake and starting to seek a safer place as I was underneath framing the shots.
And little it was, even smaller than average, as we can see because I couldn’t let it go at these, and had to get some scale and better detail images.
The muscles of most snakes are impressive, but rough green snakes can suspend themselves way out from minimal purchase, or in this case, abandon the established support of my hand to throw its hindbody out for a different grip to try and escape – you can see the tailtip curled over one finger, while it looks like I’m demonstrating knot tying. Naturally, this is going on in my left hand while the camera is held in my right.
Overall length was probably a little over 30 cm, but they can easily get better than twice this, and twice this girth so, you know, huge.
Here I’d finally convinced it to use my hand as support – for a moment, anyway. Even at this size/age, you can see the scars from past encounters, though I’m inclined to think ‘songbird that wasn’t happy to find it within the leaves’ and not your typical predators of snakes, since it wouldn’t have survived most of them. And the scars were not likely from battles with its own prey either, since those are slugs and spiders and so on.
I did a lot of frames, partially because it was moving around so much I was never sure that focus was correct, but also trying for a decent portrait. I would have liked to have captured this one with the tongue out, but it held the pose for less than a half-second. Meanwhile, notice the tail extended out to the left.
And the last one, for giggles, since it had now coiled its tailtip over its own head, actually holding it there for a little bit, perhaps secure in its grip.
I released it back into the tree where I found it after this session, and it slipped deeper into the foliage and out of sight quite quickly. Will it stick around in the immediate area? Will I see it again? Can’t predict that, but I’ll keep you posted.