pantherophis's Favorites

ELC 1419 Corresponds to Carex bella-villae Dewey https://plants.jstor.org/stable/10.5555

Individu parasité par des pucerons, potentielle explication pour la morphologie atypique des épis. Spécimen du puceron: Favret, Colin # 4055, déposé dans la Collection entomologique Ouellet-Robert https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/135480399.
Échantillon dans le gel de silice. Échantillon gardé vivant au jardin botanique.

Marécage à Acer saccharinum. Sol meuble. Avec Carex lupulina typiques, Carex retrorsa, Lobelia cardinalis. Carex comosa dans le même habitat mais à plusieurs dizaines de mètres. Pente: nulle, Exposition: NA, Drainage: mauvais. Une seule touffe montre cette morphologie extrême.

LEAVES:
-7 to 9 leaflets

BARK:
-tight bark

FRUIT:
-nuts with thick husk that splits completely to the base (husk much thicker than bitternut, similar to thickness or slightly thinner than on typical shagbarks)
-smooth, un-ribbed nut with sharp point and thin, brittle shell
-nut meat is sweet-tasting with pleasant flavour

TWIGS & BUDS:
-thick twigs (thicker than what is typical for either of the parent species)
-large, naked buds covered in velvety hairs

NOTE:
The 6th picture shows the twig of this putative Carya x laneyi in between each of the parent species. A pure C. ovata twig is placed on the left, and a pure C. cordiformis twig is placed on the right.

Surprise! And just when you thought my observations couldn't go any further back in time towards the "Dawn of Herpetology", haha! This is 16 year-old Fingers on his very first field trip to the beautiful Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula of eastern North Carolina - a region I immediately fell in love with for it's awesome swampland vistas and abundantly diverse herpetofauna. "Canebrake" Rattlers are quite common in this area - according to my old field notes taken on that "excellent adventure", we found 8 specimens of these impressive Crotalids in all growth stages over a 3-day weekend, half of them "road hunting" in the early evening. Ah, the "good ol' days"!

Talk about "Old School" - this pic is 40 years "Old", and I was a Senior in High "School", haha! I spotted this nice young "Canebrake" with just it's head sticking out of the roadside weeds in East Lake, North Carolina. That's my best friend/cousin/herpetological colleague "Pete" (@jdanch) skulking in the background - hoping for similar luck!

Another "blast from the past" observation that may help to dispel the theory that my entire youth was "misspent", haha! This is me as a 16 year-old punk-ass "herp-kid" helping out as an intern on a presence/absence survey for this NJ State Endangered species back in 1978. I could barely contain my ego (hmm... still have a little trouble with that!) having "shown up" the professional Field Herpetologists who were my "heroes" and had allowed me to tag along - by finding all the Timbers (4 total) and a beautiful, 36" adult male Copperhead that fine day... well, that was at least until the moment I pulled a 5-foot Northern Black Racer out of a deep crevice by it's tail. That smug, glorious feeling faded away real fast and was replaced with red-faced embarrassment as I heard a distant voice call out - "Hey! Don't hold a Black Racer like that..." as it reared back, did a full "u-turn" in mid-air and bit me hard, smack in the middle of my nose! Bled like a fool for almost a half hour - and all my "big time" pro mentors nearly fell down the rockslide laughing their butts off!!! It all came back and "bit" me again the following Monday, when I showed up at school with my black 'n blue schnozz, with 6 perfect rows of teeth-marks emblazoned right across it! Got my hump busted about it for at least 2 weeks - even by some of my teachers, haha! A few wiseguy kids even wrote stuff like "Good luck, Snakeface", etc. in my yearbook (see additional photos). Still cracks me up!

This leucistic individual is Salamander C. This one has been photographed and observed since 2010 many times by Don Scallen and it had at least been alive two years before that, making it thirteen years old- two years older then me!

Observed crossing sand road in Sand Prairie habitat (see other pics). There is a theory that this is an introduced population, as this species was not recorded in extreme eastern Illinois prior to 1980. Many believe this is not the case, as there are similar natural populations in other counties not far to the West.

Predation - robin tried to kill snake for 2 minutes with multiple attacks. Snake responded with strikes (fake strikes?), escape attempts, and a couple of attempts to look dead lying curled up upside down? The snake eventually made it into the brush and the robin left.

Found within 10 miles of where a historical montanus record was noted, and the pattern heavilly reminds me of some mid-atlantic montanus photos I’ve seen. Plus the iris appeared more brown, but it is hard to tell since I had to recover the third photo from a bad smudge on my lens.

Very large Bur Oak (measured at 4.07 feet DBH) at the end of a ravine forest in high tech Kanata North. There were other, very mature Bur Oaks in this otherwise young forest. The oak is at one end of the old Blue Heron Trail on Hines Road that connects to Trillium Woods.

Caught in trap. Same female seen yesterday in this obs: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/79170091

Good example, as she has 4 labials on the right and 5 on the left. Good postlabials.

I am naming her Rose since she is a golden girl.

Dicephalic neonate found in a residential yard. GTS 861. VW ABC 015. Note several spinal kinks. Specimen survived several months, fed sporadically, died and was preserved.

See: Wallach, Van, and Gerard T. Salmon (2013) Axial Bifurcation and Duplication in Snakes. Part V. A Review of Nerodia sipedon Cases with a New Record from New York State, 102-106. In Bulletin of the Chicago Herpetological Society 48(8).