Redbelly snake again

Storeria occipitomaculata

Last July, we found a dead redbelly snake (Storeria occipitomaculata) on our driveway, but we couldn’t be sure if it was resident on our property or had been dropped by a bird. This morning, my wife found a live one crossing one of our garden paths. What I find most interesting is that Dekay’s brown snakes (Storeria dekayi) are very common on our property, so we apparently have both Storeria species sharing the same habitat. Eastern worm snakes (Carphophis amoenus) and smooth earth snakes (Virginia valeriae) live here too, and all four of the little snake species have similar diets. Worm snakes are obviously specialized for burrowing and preying on earthworms, but the other three species inhabit the leaf litter and hunt a wider range of prey. According to Palmer and Braswell [1] earth snakes eat earthworms, insects, and snails, while redbelly and brown snakes prefer slugs and snails (with some earthworms). So the question is, are these little snakes directly competing, or do they inhabit subtly different microhabitats that are not obvious simply by looking at dietary preferences?

(A fifth small snake species, the ringneck snake (Diadophis punctatus) also lives here, but its diet includes small amphibians and lizards, so I think it is less likely to compete with the other species).

Reference

Palmer, W.M., and Braswell, A.L., 1995, Reptiles of North Carolina, University of North Carolina Press.

…And a copperhead

Last weekend, my wife and my niece were collecting rotting logs to line the bottom of a very large planter–sort of micro-scale hügelkultur–when my niece uncovered this snake in our old log pile. My sister has been teaching her to identify venomous snakes, so she simply said “hello copperhead” and stepped back. The snake posed nicely while we took photos, and then slowly retreated deeper into the log pile. We decided that we had enough logs for the planter.

Agkistrodon contortrix, eastern copperhead

Mauve Sleekwort

A not-very-good photo of Liparis lilifolia. Its brownish flowers are difficult to spot in the leaf litter and even harder to photograph satisfactorily.

After sixteen years, I thought I had found all of the interesting plant species growing on our property, so I was very surprised to stumble across a flowering specimen of Liparis lilifolia yesterday evening. This orchid is known as the lily-leaved twayblade, but I prefer its alternative common name, mauve sleekwort.

L. lilifolia grows at scattered locations throughout the mountains, piedmont, and coastal plain of North Carolina, and its range extends over much of eastern North America, from Quebec and Ontario south to Georgia. Its flowers are visited by flies, although they are not pollinated very frequently. Coincidentally, one of my neighbors had emailed earlier in the week to say she had found the species on her property, so today we served as orchid matchmakers and attempted cross-pollination with toothpicks.

My plant is growing in the woods outside our deer fence, so I have covered it with a wire cage while we wait to see if viable seed will be produced. And now, I’m wondering what else I have overlooked in the leaf litter.