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Nature day!
May. 2nd, 2022 02:45 amContent Warnings: Bugs, snakes, animals killing each other
So last summer Pinewoods dance camp had to hire a new camp director. They landed on Chris, who had experience in the nonprofit world from working as director of a nearby nature center. During each session I was at camp, she gave a different little naturewalk among the camp itself --the kind of thing where you walk about 200 yards in an hour but have learned more than you ever thought possible about the different kinds of sedges and ferns and wildflowers and bushes and trees and bugs and moss along the way!
She offered up in the auction the chance for a small group to have a ~private nature walk~...during a time of year that wasn't actually camp! Get to see nature in a different season, also eat snacks in the beautiful woods. I confirmed that jere7my and Kendra would also find it interesting, and we _jumped_ on it! And now, eight months after camp, we have gone!
I brought Austin, and the two of them brought Kendra's work colleagues, and Elliot had arrived at camp for the season as Grounds-crew Chief, so Chris plus the seven of us went traipsing around a bit and looking mostly for bugs. Chris's favourite place to find bugs is by sludging up the floor of the ponds with nets and dumping the finds into a bowl of clear water, plus there was some more general poking around.
It was a very exciting bug adventure, with two *exceptional* highlights (and I'll try to upload photos of both later).
The first was when Chris was talking dragonfly and damselfly life cycles, and mentioning how as the transitioned to adult, they left behind exuviae, often clinging to sticks near the water (hard to see) or the edges of the dock just above the water line (much easier to see). Now, exuviae is near and dear to mine and Chris's hearts, since it's one of the ways we bonded last year --after camp was over I sent her some of the cicada exuviae I had collected from the Brood X emergence in May, and she return-posted some dragonfly and damselfly ones from Pinewoods! So it would've been pretty cool to find more.
And then I spotted one! It looked a little weird, but I chalked that up to being intimately familiar with cicadas and not nearly as much with other bugs. Until I reached to detach it and it shuddered and twitched its legs and I realized the exuviae was another inch higher and the thing I had found was the dragonfly currently emerging from it
Oh did we make merry. I now have photos of a new species emerging! In the ~20 minutes we were at that pond, it went from still-tail-in the shell to all the way out and wings wrinkled against its back. I was able to return when it was snacktime, a few hours later, and it was still there, wings stretched out and drying...and held perpendicular to the surface, like a damselfly would, instead of parallel like a dragonfly! Apparently it's the one time in their lifecycle they do that, waiting for the wings to fully dry so it can depart.
Between those photo ops, we were up on the path wandering towards the venal pool. Chris was explaining something exciting, but I had let my eye wander a wee bit...to catch the movement of something thrashing a bit. "I think that's a snake!" I said, as excited as I can possibly be (because let's be real, insects are only my favourite because they're easier to find). I never successfully spot snakes, always someone else sees them first and then I can go look too (and half those times I'm not fast enough to catch more than a disappearing tail), so this was a THRILLING moment.
This snake wasn't going anywhere. Because this wee lovely garter snake, head diameter about 1 inch, was currently latched onto some kind of local frog, stomach diameter about three inches. Brutal? Oh sure, but that's nature and that's life and it was SO COOL! I now have a pile of photos of the snake working on the frog --Austin and I wound up staying and watching for longer than everyone else, and we theorized that the snake would sorta...tenderize the body as it thrashed it around, until it would all fit into those famous unhinged jaws. Chris later confirmed that to be the case, adding that probably there would be some digestive acid to help break it down.
It was _so cool_. Alas not there later (although I did feel like a proper forensic detective, spotting one lonely little leaf among the litter with a bright red splash of frog blood on it) but I am incredibly satisfied to have gotten to see not just a snake, but one doing something really interesting!
And then there were snacks, and the drive home (always so much longer than _to_ camp) and Austin and I collapsing into naptime and shower and tick check. Now I've been sleeping and will sleep again. Goodnight!
~Sor
MOOP!
Content Warning: bugs, snakes, animals killing each other
So last summer Pinewoods dance camp had to hire a new camp director. They landed on Chris, who had experience in the nonprofit world from working as director of a nearby nature center. During each session I was at camp, she gave a different little naturewalk among the camp itself --the kind of thing where you walk about 200 yards in an hour but have learned more than you ever thought possible about the different kinds of sedges and ferns and wildflowers and bushes and trees and bugs and moss along the way!
She offered up in the auction the chance for a small group to have a ~private nature walk~...during a time of year that wasn't actually camp! Get to see nature in a different season, also eat snacks in the beautiful woods. I confirmed that jere7my and Kendra would also find it interesting, and we _jumped_ on it! And now, eight months after camp, we have gone!
I brought Austin, and the two of them brought Kendra's work colleagues, and Elliot had arrived at camp for the season as Grounds-crew Chief, so Chris plus the seven of us went traipsing around a bit and looking mostly for bugs. Chris's favourite place to find bugs is by sludging up the floor of the ponds with nets and dumping the finds into a bowl of clear water, plus there was some more general poking around.
It was a very exciting bug adventure, with two *exceptional* highlights (and I'll try to upload photos of both later).
The first was when Chris was talking dragonfly and damselfly life cycles, and mentioning how as the transitioned to adult, they left behind exuviae, often clinging to sticks near the water (hard to see) or the edges of the dock just above the water line (much easier to see). Now, exuviae is near and dear to mine and Chris's hearts, since it's one of the ways we bonded last year --after camp was over I sent her some of the cicada exuviae I had collected from the Brood X emergence in May, and she return-posted some dragonfly and damselfly ones from Pinewoods! So it would've been pretty cool to find more.
And then I spotted one! It looked a little weird, but I chalked that up to being intimately familiar with cicadas and not nearly as much with other bugs. Until I reached to detach it and it shuddered and twitched its legs and I realized the exuviae was another inch higher and the thing I had found was the dragonfly currently emerging from it
Oh did we make merry. I now have photos of a new species emerging! In the ~20 minutes we were at that pond, it went from still-tail-in the shell to all the way out and wings wrinkled against its back. I was able to return when it was snacktime, a few hours later, and it was still there, wings stretched out and drying...and held perpendicular to the surface, like a damselfly would, instead of parallel like a dragonfly! Apparently it's the one time in their lifecycle they do that, waiting for the wings to fully dry so it can depart.
Between those photo ops, we were up on the path wandering towards the venal pool. Chris was explaining something exciting, but I had let my eye wander a wee bit...to catch the movement of something thrashing a bit. "I think that's a snake!" I said, as excited as I can possibly be (because let's be real, insects are only my favourite because they're easier to find). I never successfully spot snakes, always someone else sees them first and then I can go look too (and half those times I'm not fast enough to catch more than a disappearing tail), so this was a THRILLING moment.
This snake wasn't going anywhere. Because this wee lovely garter snake, head diameter about 1 inch, was currently latched onto some kind of local frog, stomach diameter about three inches. Brutal? Oh sure, but that's nature and that's life and it was SO COOL! I now have a pile of photos of the snake working on the frog --Austin and I wound up staying and watching for longer than everyone else, and we theorized that the snake would sorta...tenderize the body as it thrashed it around, until it would all fit into those famous unhinged jaws. Chris later confirmed that to be the case, adding that probably there would be some digestive acid to help break it down.
It was _so cool_. Alas not there later (although I did feel like a proper forensic detective, spotting one lonely little leaf among the litter with a bright red splash of frog blood on it) but I am incredibly satisfied to have gotten to see not just a snake, but one doing something really interesting!
And then there were snacks, and the drive home (always so much longer than _to_ camp) and Austin and I collapsing into naptime and shower and tick check. Now I've been sleeping and will sleep again. Goodnight!
~Sor
MOOP!
Content Warning: bugs, snakes, animals killing each other
