{"id":36295,"date":"2024-02-21T06:16:29","date_gmt":"2024-02-21T11:16:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=36295"},"modified":"2024-02-12T02:16:49","modified_gmt":"2024-02-12T07:16:49","slug":"just-once-part-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2024\/02\/just-once-part-8\/","title":{"rendered":"Just once, part 8"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Kingsnake1.jpg\" alt=\"eastern kingsnake Lampropeltis getula chilling\" width=\"750\" height=\"500\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-23828\" \/><br clear=\"all\"\/>So not only has this species only appeared once before here, I&#8217;ve only seen them once in my entire life (in the wild anyway,) despite the fact that they&#8217;re supposed to be quite common. So I was delighted to spot this eastern kingsnake (<em>Lampropeltis getula<\/em>) just snoozing out in the open in a heavily wooded spot alongside Jordan Lake, but it also was amazingly cooperative in deciding to slink away slowly instead of shooting off in a flash, allowing for a whole sequence of images, and came within centimeters of my foot as it did so. It&#8217;s a harmless species and thus didn&#8217;t concern me with this, but to the best that I could determine, I was standing between its napping spot and its routine shelter, and so it detoured around me with elaborate calm to avoid attracting attention with sudden movement<strong>;<\/strong> had I done anything more than slowly pivot to follow it, I might have seen a more energetic escape.  But isn&#8217;t that color pattern slick, especially on the head? I couldn&#8217;t tell you what purpose this serves, and it seems to me that horizontal banding <em>enhances<\/em> the motion of the snake and would make it easier to track by a hawk or an owl. I&#8217;ve chased plenty of snakes, and their habit of following through a &#8216;fixed&#8217; curve makes you fixate on the midbody, which seems not to be moving that fast until the tail snaps through that curve and vanishes<strong>;<\/strong> this is a common trait and one that I&#8217;m sure helps a lot, so banding that defeats this illusion doesn&#8217;t seem right to me.<\/p>\n<p>But yeah, I&#8217;m always hoping to eradicate this species from the &#8216;just once&#8217; list, preferably with a lot of photos. <em>This<\/em> will be the year&#8230; right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So not only has this species only appeared once before here, I&#8217;ve only seen them once in my entire life (in the wild anyway,) despite the fact that they&#8217;re supposed to be quite common. So I was delighted to spot this eastern kingsnake (Lampropeltis getula) just snoozing out in the open in a heavily wooded [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3,12],"tags":[4930,4931],"class_list":["post-36295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-photo","category-random","tag-eastern-kingsnake","tag-lampropeltis-getula"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36295\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}