northeast-flora-and-fauna

Here are pictures of Northern Watersnakes mating. (They are a subspecies of the Common Watersnake .) Generally speaking the females will grow larger than the males. I'm assuming these snake tangles all have 1 female and 1+ males. Ultimately all this romance should lead to the females giving birth to little snakelets ; Northern Watersnake females don't lay eggs but practice ovoviviparity . Though these snake babies get to meet their mother, that's generally the end of the relationship; the mother doesn't actively raise her young. In this first picture I was initially wondering if this was just one (long) snake, but eventually noticed two heads in there. April 14, 2021 at Great Swamp Photo 121032715, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) This seemed to be the most populated coil, with 4 different snakes tangled together. April 14, 2021 at Great Swamp Photo 121033742, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) Here's another pair, much less spread out. A...

I've seen in movies where a character is given a Rorschach test and wants to give a harmless interpretation for the image, they'll claim it looks like "two butterflies mating". But how many people know what mating butterflies even look like? I've seen butterflies (and other insects) mating on a fair number of occasions, and below is a pair of Cabbage Whites mating. During mating, their abdomens are attached though their wings usually cover this up. Typically if it looks like two butterflies are standing back-to-back and touching, there's a pretty good chance they're mating. (More info here .) It's neat to see but difficult to photograph, but sometimes one will fly off while they're still attached. (I suspect I may have spooked some of them into flight myself.) August 15, 2020 at Negri Nepote Native Grassland Preserve August 15, 2020 at Negri Nepote Native Grassland Preserve