Audubon Guides - Rattlesnake

It’s hot – somewhere between 93°F and 97°F degrees on the last day before the Autumnal Equinox. I know this because I have an acute sensory organ known as my skin that is covered in sweat and getting browner by the second. The momma Rattlesnake that just poked her head out from her limestone den can top me. She has a two-chambered pit found between the eye and nostril and on both sides of the head. It can sense temperature differences of less than 1/2°F. In this sultry, sub-tropical Everglades environment I must appear as a bright light on a pitch black night. TO READ THE REST OF THIS POST - HEAD OVER TO AUDUBON GUIDES WHERE I AM WRITING A WEEKLY COLUMN!

http://audubonguides.wordpress.com/2009/09/30/rattlesnake/

What's in the Cave?!? WHAT'S IN THE CAVE!?!

Don't come down here. There's something in the cave! It's rattling. I think it's a Rattlesnake. Everybody stay where you are! It sounds weird. More like a hisssssssssssssss. Are there Rattlesnakes in New York?

For the Labor Day Weekend we drove up from Florida (yes drove) to Glass Lake, New York for a family reunion.

We used to spend our summers here and one of the big adventures was to climb Bearshead Mountain to the lookout and look down at Glass Lake (pictured below with Albany, NY in the distance).

Once most of the mobile family tree had wandered back down, I asked some of the more limber and daring in the crowd if they had ever been to the "boulders" below the cliff. It's a good 100 foot drop from the lookout but if you carefully navigate the foot-wide rock ledge you can shimmy down with relative ease.

When we were kids there was a porcupine den under the boulders and we would snag quills if the den was vacant.

When I hopped down to check it out we all heard a very loud hissssssssss which cousin Sam had also heard moments before my jump. My first thought was rattlesnake and although the noise persisted it didn't sound right. One of the stupidest things you can do is antagonize a rattlesnake but boys will be boys (which accounts for most of the rattlesnake bites each year) and Sam, Will and I continued to poke and prod around the area.

Hey look - bird poop on the rock. Hey - downy white feathers near the cave entrance. Hey! A broken egg a bit bigger than a chicken egg.

Well if it's not a snake we can stick a camera right in there! I see some feathers and a foot.

It is a Vulture. A juvenile Turkey Vulture! Doing what vultures do. Hanging out in caves while mom and dad are out pulling roadkill off the road to bring back and regurgitate for junior. Having taken a picture and solved the mystery, we didn't want to upset the puker any further so we left him to his boulder cave.

Turkey Vultures disappear from Florida in the summer so it was fun to see one up North. They nest on cliffs or in caves with the parents taking care of them for nearly 3 months after their 30 day incubation. The young are born nearly all white but this one is probably about two months old. In a few more weeks it'll fly down south with mom and pop and start feeding on delicious Florida roadkill.

The hissing? When alarmed the adults will vomit or play dead but the young will vomit or hiss. Lovely considering what they eat. Since vultures have no larynx, they can only makes a raspy hissing sound that sounds to a Florida Jungle Boy like a Rattlesnake or at least Sir Hiss from Disney's Robin Hood. Ah the fun of a mystery. Turns out there are no known Timber Rattlesnakes in this part of NY anyway.

I wonder what ever happened to the Porcupine.....

A Super-sized Christmas Everglades tour with the Millers

When Lisa suggested she wanted to bring her family on my Everglades tour I was elated. When she told me there were 24 family members that would join me for this pre-Christmas excursion I had to super-size the plans. Our regular 14 passenger vans would not do. It was time to break out the 25-passenger "Funmobile"!
I worked with Lisa in Vermont from 2002-2006 before she took the helm of the Four Winds Nature Institute - a community based environmental organization staffed with some of the best educators around. She's just "super" and one of my favorite people. I must admit that guiding her family around the Everglades was a daunting task. Imagine the headlines if I inadvertently drove the entire family into a lake of alligators? It's the exact reason the President of the United States and Vice-President are not aloud to travel together - although I'd be glad to drive those two into said lake. I met the group in Fort Myers and after being chased away from our designated rest area/parking spot by an over zealous rest area/parking spot security guy, we found a better spot, left the caravan and headed south for the Everglades. The Miller family was every bit as energetic and enthusiastic as Lisa. It was almost scary. I'm used to my family gatherings where games of Monopoly are routinely ended by an "earthquake" and angry passengers threaten to leap from moving cars. But I digress as usual.

The boat cruise took us out to the edge of the Mangrove forest along the Gulf of Mexico where I could blissfully forget that not only did I lock the Funmobile key in the bus. I locked them both in there. Don't tell the boss. And if he's reading this. I'm just making it up for this story. Which I'm not. We were treated to a first for me on our Wildlife Drive when a 5-foot Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake slithered across the road. It paused. Rattled and eventually slithered into the sawgrass. A good reminder to watch our step along the way. (Apparently I was saved by my mother at the age of 5 when I wandered in our backyard and almost stepped on a Rattlesnake. other than that -this was my first wild one). On my tours, I always talk about the natural history as well as the troubles and the successes the Everglades have endured. I'm always concerned that environmental problems are a downer, but throughout the day, any mention of Everglades restoration success was met with spontaneous and unsolicited cheering. It was the most endearing thing I've experienced on a tour since a 5 year old boy told me back in 1999 that he wanted to save the Everglades so the Panthers could have a home.
My biggest worry for the day was selling the airboat as a legitimate part of an "eco-tour". They are noisy, but in the shallow waters of Lake Trafford and the Everglades, there is no other way to explore, lest one wishes to wander through the mucky swamp water of the most densely populated alligator lake in the world. Do they degrade the environment? Do they have a negative impact on the plant and wildlife. I will argue no. I hope I convincingly sold that. You have to experience it to understand it.

Our December 23rd trip was a day after the Winter Solstice. For the last 5 years I have led night-time solstice hikes up Mount Equinox in Manchester, VT. Although I missed it this year, it was nice to spend this day experiencing the solstice in a new way. I was hopelessly late getting to our airboat ride which was met with spontaneous and unsolicited cheers as the setting sun provided fantastic scenery around the lake.

The following day I discussed successful restoration projects in the Everglades and looked back to see the reaction of my new guests. They smiled and continued to listen. No spontaneous applause. I won't begrudge them of this reaction. It might be unfair to hold others up to such a high standard - There's really no family quite like the Millers.

Beware of Pygmies - Snake, Rattle and Roll

There are four venomous snakes that are found in the Everglades. Most common is the Water Moccasin (Cottonmouth). Largest is the Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake. Most uncommon is the Coral Snake and the venomous snake most likely to bite someone? The Pygmy Rattlesnake. I hiked into the Okaloacoochee Slough on Saturday in search of whatever might be around. The water is low, but still up enough that I'd have to wade wherever I might go and the temperature is in the upper 80's. Low enough that snakes might be basking today and just my luck, I came across my 2nd Pygmy in the wild.

The last time I saw one of these in the wild was 1999 on tour. It was crossing the dirt road in the Preserve and I jumped out of the van to stop the snake from slithering off. I realized that I had not put the van in neutral when I looked up and saw the van rolling towards me with 11 terrified tourists watching. This was a little less stressful.

I do worry about these. They only get up to 30 inches long - so quite small and they have a wee little rattle, so they sound like a buzzing insect - not the warning necessary to keep a human from stepping on them. And because this warning system is so poorly designed, they rely on their venomous bite as a last defense - thus the high incidence of bites in Florida.

I kept my distance, but was able to get close enough to get a good look at the pattern down the back. Beautiful colors.

They're fairly quick, but when they are strung out like this, they don't have the ability to strike like they might if they were coiled up. It would be like putting your fist in someone's face with arm outstretched and trying to hit them. Try this now on someone. I'll wait.

Here you can see the classic triangular shaped head that most venomous snakes have. Water snakes will flatten their head and mimic a venomous snake, but here the shape is quite obviously distinctive. These facial pits that create the triangular shape allow them to pick up heat signatures - seen as infrared light - and allows them to track prey. They actually will coil up and wait for anoles, frogs or other cold blooded critters to come by. If they're close enough, they strike, inject venom and wait for their prey to die. They then track them and eat them.

If the snake were to bite someone, it couldn't give enough venom to kill unless you were on your deathbed and deathbeds are not their preferred habitat. If it's a defensive bite - they might not inject any venom or at least less than a hunting bite. You would need treatment just in case. The venom affects the blood causing necrotic tissue. Anti-venom prevents the tissue destruction

In case you thought "pygmy" was a misnomer - the snake is in fact small as you can see here. And where's the rattle! It's virtually non-existent. The rattle is made of several hollowed out "buttons" or scales from their tail - but on pygmies it's tiny.

A hunter came up as I was taking pictures and decided to "inform" me of the natural history of Pygmies. I guess I looked like a tourist with my camera. "You need one of those big cameras" he said before tromping off into the swamp to kill something.