And so it begins…

Mid March and the signs of spring are popping up all over. Because of the unusually warm winter this year the trees are budding and plants are blooming earlier than usual. We still have cool days, but temps are regularly getting into the mid 50’s and up. It has also been wet lately, so good conditions for emerging flora.

The image above shows the Great Marsh area in the Indiana Dunes National Park as it appears now. The water levels are nice and healthy. This area is undergoing extensive restoration. Not too long ago it was more swamp than marsh, and full of abandoned roads and homes. The remains of the former residential use of the land are still visible all along the trails, which themselves follow the old raised road beds.

These are some of the first wild flowers I have seen in the Indiana Dunes this year.

What was in abundance were the Spring Peepers! These tiny frogs emerge in the spring, chirping away as they attempt to find a mate. Where ever there was standing water, they were out in abundance. Given the fact that they are tiny and brownish, and hiding in the brown grasses and reeds, they are nearly impossible to spot. But not hard at all to hear, as the following video demonstrates…

The great thing about nature is that things are interconnected. When you have thousands and thousands of tiny frogs mating you tend to find other things… like hundreds and hundreds of snakes, out hunting frogs!

Now even though the trail was literally teaming with snakes, most people out for a walk would likely never spot one unless they happen to catch it lying across the trail. Not only do they blend in with the ground cover, they also move very quickly and they scatter when people come walking down the trail.

To the local wildlife, people make an incredible racket as they walk along a trail. They typically see/hear/smell/feel us coming long before we can spot them, and so they freeze in place or simply move out of sight. But… if you walk up to a spot and then just stop and remain still, the wild life will return and go about its business as if you were not there. Now it may require that you stay still and quite for multiple minutes, which is surprisingly difficult to do until you gain some experience with it. And you really have to be still and quite, no shifting your feet or making any large motions or generating any sound… but when you do, this is what happens…

When you first approach an area all of the critters vanish or go quiet. Frogs nearby stop chirping and snakes slither off or become motionless. Then after a few minutes they will begin to resume their normal behavior. The frogs start chirping again, and this motivates the snakes to resume hunting. At one point I stopped in a promising spot along the edge of the water, and after a few minutes I began to spot motion down in the grasses surrounding me as the snakes moved almost silently in pursuit of lunch. You won’t have much success searching the ground cover looking for the snakes. Instead you have to learn how to relax the eyes and just pay attention to movement in your peripheral vision, then you will have no problem spotting small wildlife. As I stood in this one particular spot I easily caught sight of at least one snake every minute or so. At one point one was coming straight at my foot and I wondered if it was actually going to go over it like a log. Instead it veered off sharply when it got within about a foot of my foot.

As a photographer I had to be patient about getting photographs of them. They were pretty much in constant motion and rarely remained still for more than a few seconds. Any quick movement with the camera to try and point it and get off a shot is guaranteed to send your target slithering off into the brush. My strategy is to fold my tripod legs together and use it as a monopod, stuck in the ground close to my body, with the camera set to a large aperture and high shutter speed. Then when I see a snake slowing down or pausing in one spot, I try to very gently and quietly turn my body and camera in that direction, without moving my feet. If I can get the snake in the viewfinder I quickly snap off a photograph (with the camera set in silent mode by the way) without worrying about whether or not I have it framed well or even in good focus, because often that initial brief moment is all you get. But every once in a while the snake remains in place after that first quick shot, then I take more time to try and get a more optimized photo. Occasionally I am able to get a really nice shot this way, and sometimes a quick shot turns out really well by chance. More often they are gone from the frame when I hit the shutter release, or they are partially obscured by intervening foliage. But over the course of about 20 minutes I was able to get some clear shots at the little buggers.

One of the best things about this particular day, was the sensation of being surrounded by dozens and dozens of snakes. Slithering all around me, popping in and out of sight. A really awesome experience!