Worm snake

Beetle, crickets, ants, and assorted flying insects all land up in our swimming pool. Every day I rescue some and some of the beetles immediately 'jump' back in ... Occasionally larger critters fall in and these I try and identify. The worm snake looked like its name .... a large worm lying on a floating plastic tube. As worms are rare in our yard and this one was definitely longer than normal I was curious. The 'worm' swam vigorously away underwater when I tried to fish it out with a net. I easily caught it and took a look.

The animal was the thickness of a pencil and a uniform dark color on top with a slightly lighter shade under. I thought it might be a glass lizard and checked in "Amphibians and Reptiles of the Carolinas and Virginia" by Martof etc. Nope. The coloring did not match with any of the three glass lizards illustrated. I browsed the snake section and there it was - a worm snake. Length was right, location was right, photo matched. Apparently it is a common snake but rarely seen.

Photo by J.D. Willson

You can read about this snake and see photos at the Davison Herpetology site or at this site from the University of Georgia.

Record keeping

Now that the MAPS banding season is over I've concentrated on paperwork. All that banding data must go into Bandit and MapsProg and be submitted. I've just completed the records for the spring 2008 season and submitted them to the banding lab. Through early May 2008 I banded 34 species at this station. Next I'll complete putting MAPS records into MapsProg and see if I can export the data over to Bandit. I hope so.

With the end of MAPS the feeders went back up. The birds found them after about a week. Now the usuals are regularly visiting, including at least one 'smart' squirrel and a very 'tame' bunny. WBNU and BHNU are back for the food. Some birds are eating in the blueberry patch but there is no obvious diminution of the supply when we go picking berries.