northeast-flora-and-fauna

Since Northern Watersnakes were the stars of my trip to Great Swamp, and have also showed up along the Delaware-Raritan Canal, I wanted to give snake lovers a chance to see the whole suite of them . Despite a lot of mating going on, we're not going to see slithering baby snakelets for a while; the snakelets won't be born until 3-5 months after mating. If all goes well, some should be making their appearance in a July-September timeframe. The moms will usually give birth to about 8 snakelets, but a large Northern Watersnake could give birth to as many as 30 snakelets. The snake below lives along the Delaware-Raritan Canal in Franklin Township. Similar to turtles and frogs, watersnakes are usually found over or very near to water, and they'll try and escape there if a threat (or frequently a photographer) comes along. April 27, 2021 at the Delaware-Raritan Canal Photo 127320684, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

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...