 |
| Frogfruit |
 |
| Lantana |
However, the chickadee still fussed at me. A house finch landed on an oak branch over me. Maybe a baby bird's on the ground? I glanced around some more. Nothing.
Finally, I walked a ways down a flower bed that parallels the fence, still looking around. Nothing. As I stood there, perplexed, a juvenile robin landed atop the fence with its back to me. For several seconds, it looked straight down. And I mean STRAIGHT DOWN at the ground!
FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, LOOK DOWN, LADY! LOOK DOWN!
"OK, OK!" I laughed. "I'll look some more!"
I walked over to our gate and leaned against the fence, looking hard all over the ground on both sides of the our fence.
OH! NOW I GET IT!
 |
| American beautyberry |
 |
| You can see why I kept missing this snake on the ground... |
 |
| He's flattening out.... |
Eastern hognose snakes (Heterodon platirhinos)
act deadly but are nonvenomous. Their defensive behavior includes:
puffing up and hissing like an adder, lunging like an adder, convulsing
and playing dead, and even pooping.
 |
| I'm a deadly cobra...get away from me. Ha, we knew better! |
 | |||
| After a brief visit, our hognose friend slithered into a nearby brush pile. I'm sure the birds aren't happy with me, but diversity's a good thing to have in a Texas Wildscape. |
7 comments:
That's exciting! I'll bet (s)he is the same one you released. Funny little birds ... Thanks for these great photos. I've never seen a hognose puff up, so this is a treat. As an aside, I'm not seeing many baby snakes this spring. I wonder why?
Love it! Great that you knew better, but how precious the birds enacted their own warning system for you! :-)
Snakes seem to prefer to stay out of the way, Sandy. Guess they know how much they're disliked by most (not us!). And yes, those birds just HATE HATE HATE snakes. For good reason. They eat bird eggs and baby birds.
Those are such beautiful blooms, Sheryl, and that snake, well lets just say running and screaming would have been the natural reaction in our Sunfield Community Garden. Although we have been trying our best to keep it critter free!
We just posted about keeping out the Texas heat too at http://www.sunfieldtx.com/blog.html
Sheryl-
Well at least I know what this type of Snake looks like, but ANY snake scares me and sends me running away from it!
You are one Brave Woman! Glad you Looked Down!
Martha
Up date on the snake. A year later we saw five young hog-nosed snakes coming out a hole at the base of an old oak tree in our meadow. It looked sort of evil to see them all slither out of their den. We are guessing snake Sheryl took the picture of might have been pregnant. Beautiful snake! You just want to hug it don't you! :)
Post a Comment