The Wildlife Code

Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) blooms during summer in wetlands, along streams, and in moist woodlands. If you find a patch, give them a sniff and take in their cinnamon-like fragrance. Like other native milkweeds, Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) caterpillars feed on its leaves. One group that won’t feed on its leaves, though, are deer. The foliage of Swamp Milkweed has a strong bitter taste from its protective cardiac glycosides and deer tend to avoid it for this reason.

A wide range of bees, wasps, and butterflies visit the flowers of Swamp Milkweed for nectar. For instance, this one is being visited by a native Brown-belted Bumblebee (Bombus griseocollis).

At just 7–10 pounds, Gray Foxes (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) are slightly smaller than the more familiar Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes). Gray Foxes typically live in woodlands and are more nocturnal than Red Foxes, making them less likely to be seen. One of their most remarkable abilities is climbing trees, a trait they share with the Raccoon Dog of East Asia. They climb by gripping the trunk or branch with their front legs while pushing themselves upward with their hind legs.

Photo by Casey Helton, Flickr, CC BY 2.0

Hello everyone and welcome back to another 🐍! Here in the summer, grass grows tall and provides the perfect habitat for many species to thrive and hunt. Oftentimes, snakes will take advantage of these grassy areas to seek out potential prey. While they may be long, we know that snakes are not necessarily the "tallest" animals, given that they have no legs at all! To mitigate the issue of being low to the ground in tall grasses, they have devised a clever behavior. This unique adaptation is called scoping or periscoping and is used by snakes to see above grasses or tall vegetation.

Now you may be wondering why they do this in the first place, but the answer is quite simple. Snakes typically do this to simply see what their surroundings look like. Similar to a human being in a maze, if they can see over the walls, then they know where to walk, or in a snake's case, slither to the next area. They will also utilize this behavior to try to pick up more scents from the higher elevation. If higher up, they may be able to detect prey that they might have missed being close to the ground.

Aside from normal periscoping, there sadly is a different type of similar behavior called stargazing, which is similar but varies slightly from periscoping. Stargazing is when a snake will raise its body up, but instead of looking forward, they will look up at the sky for periods of time in a trance-like state. These can be signs of medical ailments such as disease or possibly neurological disruption.

Pictured below is a Northern Black Racer (Coluber constrictor ssp constrictor) that is periscoping in a grassy area.



📷 Photo by: animalmanpa (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/365756364)