{"id":37772,"date":"2024-11-07T23:23:11","date_gmt":"2024-11-08T04:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=37772"},"modified":"2024-11-07T23:23:11","modified_gmt":"2024-11-08T04:23:11","slug":"todays-surprise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2024\/11\/todays-surprise\/","title":{"rendered":"Today’s surprise"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"pileated
Well, okay, this<\/em> one wasn’t a surprise – it’s just evidence that I’m still trying to get really nice pics of the pileated woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus<\/em>) that keep visiting the property, despite their penchant for appearing through a thicket of foliage. I was busy with other tasks as this one was flitting around, so I couldn’t dedicate the time to it right then. It’ll happen.<\/p>\n

What I was referring to, however, was this guy:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"juvenile
That’s a juvenile eastern kingsnake (Lampropeltis getula<\/em>,) and I’d only ever seen one once before, as I remarked earlier this year<\/a>. This one tried to slip past me into the open garage, so I captured it and set it aside in the terrarium for a photo session a little later on.<\/p>\n

[The terrarium, by the way, is now unoccupied – the eastern spadefoot toad that I’d elected to hang onto<\/a>, thinking it was likely an invalid due to its foot injury, proved quite capable of burrowing despite the handicap, and so I released it of its own recognizance.]<\/p>\n

\"juvenile
Trying to find a place to do a photo session without the snake simply taking a powder, I settled on the miniature Japanese maple that we’d just transplanted, which worked excellently. And full credit to the snake, who investigated the tree idly but mostly held still to allow me to snag a variety of angles.<\/p>\n

\"juvenile
I shot both with and without the macro flash, but the use of it helped illustrate something:<\/strong> the eyes are starting to cloud up, indicating that the snake will be shedding its skin within a few days – it’s not too advanced yet. Typically, when it gets further along and the snake can’t see very well, it makes them much more likely to strike when disturbed. This one gave me a faint coiled defensive display when I went to remove it from the terrarium for this session, and the barest hint of striking, but was otherwise perfectly docile.<\/p>\n

\"underside
It was even cooperative enough to allow me to take a position underneath and show the belly coloration without having to flip the snake upside-down, which rarely works anyway because they can’t slither like that and so resist such attempts.<\/p>\n

\"juvenile
It’s funny;<\/strong> there’s nothing particularly elaborate about their coloration, but the contrast just makes them seem exotic to me, and I was glad to find one again. They can get a lot bigger than this, averaging about a meter in length but capable of doubling that, and I’m hoping I can continue to see them in the area. This one was just big enough to take on the smaller anoles, but was probably unable to tackle a full-grown adult.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, I liked the above pic because of the body disappearing from focus down the branch. The Japanese maple hasn’t changed much for autumn yet, and may not due to the circumstances of transplanting, but there’s a hint of color in there.<\/p>\n

\"juvenile
And I couldn’t resist the implied menace of this one, though it would have been better without the other portion of the body in there. It was a wild snake and wasn’t going to take direction, but I did gently nudge it to get it to raise its head more for clearer shots at times – can’t complain about that.<\/p>\n

After this session, I released it back near where I’d found it (but outside<\/em> the garage this time) – we’ll see if it appears again. But hey, the prediction that I’d rectify my single encounter actually came true, so now I can count on spotting kestrels<\/a> and trapdoor spiders<\/a> before the end of the year, right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, okay, this one wasn’t a surprise – it’s just evidence that I’m still trying to get really nice pics of the pileated woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus) that keep visiting the property, despite their penchant for appearing through a thicket of foliage. I was busy with other tasks as this one was flitting around, so I […]<\/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],"tags":[5434,6117,4930,3196,4931,6116],"class_list":["post-37772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-photo","tag-cooperative-subjects","tag-dryocopus-pileatus","tag-eastern-kingsnake","tag-juvenile","tag-lampropeltis-getula","tag-pileated-woodpecker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37772","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=37772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37772\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}