Wednesday Walk - Hanging Out with the Snakes

Here's a walk by a swamp way south of me for this #wednesdaywalk by @tattoodjay

For father's day we decided to go farther south in to uncharted territory for our walk. It was a nice warm day and we found a good place to walk nearby a huge science campus known as the Argonne National Laboratory. As usual we noticed Canadian geese instantly near the swampy area.

But this time we got to see lots of snakes because its warmer down in this area as its farther south. I'm guessing this might be a yellowbelly water snake, unfortunately I couldn't get him to show his throat to me to confirm the species.

This one has some nice patterns. I'm guessing its a common watersnake.

Depending on their age the common watersnake coloring can be quite drastic. This one is medium size and had a nice copper color to it but as it gets older it will become more white underneath with more pronounced markings.

I'm sure the poor bullfrogs are constantly dodging the larger watersnakes. Perhaps a few larger bullfrogs eat the tiny watersnakes every now and then, its a snake eat frog world out there.

I'm just a frog on a log in a bog raising a pollywog. Once my daughter gets old enough she'll definitely be harvesting some pollywogs to raise as pets until they turn into frogs.

Meanwhile in the air there were plenty of indigo buntings around. I'm sure they have all established nests by now.

The males like to sit high up in the tree and brag about their territory. I rarely ever see the female indigo buntings, or maybe I just mistake them for small statured sparrows.

Speaking of small here is a blue gray gnatcatcher harvesting spider web for a nest. It basically spins the spider silk around its beak and brings it back to make a hummingbird sized nest that it can paste tiny lichen and leaves to via the spiderweb.

It has plenty of material to work with as this lookout platform structure was loaded down with grass spider webs. I find these little bluegray gnatcatcher are quite tame. If you happen to hear them just stand still for a while and they'll be bouncing around in the branches right next to you eventually.

That's all for now, thanks for looking :-)