Nature Post!

[rubyelf]

In our compressed and constantly frost-threatened spring, we have reached the awkward teenage point. The childhood is full of delicate, short-blooming little flowers in a race against time, and once the adulthood of summer arrives the slower-growing plants that mature will fill the now-empty fields and roadsides and lake shores with tall, long-

Comments

[ragnarok_08]

I've always loved sitting under birch trees, even if they don't last very long.

[rubyelf]

The green is lovely but I look forward to the adventure of having things to find and identify and there's not a lot out there right now.

Almost all of our snakes are harmless, and the ones which aren't are easily recognizable, so I have no fear of playing with them.

[nimnod]

Confession: Although not phobic, I am respectful bordering on terrified of naturally occurring snakes. I can hold people's pet snakes and have them slither up my sleeve etc with only minor teeth-gritting but about 90% of snakes here are venomous, and most of those require a shot of anti-venom if they bite you because they're suitably toxic to humans, and they don't stock anti-venom in our tiny town because it goes off/denatures too quickly, so a snake-bite almost always means a 90-120 minutes painful car trip to the nearest big city. If you're bitten by a neurotoxic snake you have about 4 hours to get a shot, and that includes whatever time it takes you to get out of the bush back to town and then onto the major road to the big city. So in my head snakes-in-the-bush can realistically kill and adult, and a small child in less time, if they are neurotoxic, and I'm not an expert in telling the difference

[rubyelf]

The only reason I'm so willing to freely catch and handle snakes around here is that we only have a few venomous species and they are very easy to recognize, because they are very different from the non-venomous ones. Bites around here are nearly nonexistent, and the ones that do happen are usually to an idiot who is keeping venomous snakes for fun and gets bitten by one.

[msilverstar]

Always like your nature posts!

I think though, that your evergeen is a fir tree rather than a pine, the branches and needles seem too flat to be pineish.

[rubyelf]

Thank you... and you are, of course, quite right. I have a bad habit of referring to all conifers generically as pines even though they are obviously quite different. Laziness on my part. :)

[brigantine]

I love watching the swallows. We get barn and cliff swallows here. Some cliff swallows have formed a recurring summer colony beneath the bike path bridge over part of the slough between the airport and the university, and barn swallows manage to nest here and there on buildings on campus. I'm surprised they don't more often; there are a LOT of handy overhangs on campus that facilities maintenance can't reach to knock down (it's illegal to knock down a nest if the birds can get it complete and occupied, but I worry that they'll do it anyway, because stupid humans).

That is a handsome little snake. :)

[rubyelf]

We have cliff swallows here too; they stick their nests under the bridges over the lake and you can see them if you're going under in a kayak. They stick their heads out and give you dirty looks. They're quite safe under there because there's no way to get under the bridge from above and they're too high over the water to reach from below.

And yes, stupid humans... they will knock over the nesting boxes that the park puts out, just for fun. Or try to set trees on fire, or spray-paint on them, or otherwise just treat the world in a way that proves they should not be allowed in it.