Went for a hike today, on the hill behind cedar grove. It’s a beautiful area, with some huge boulders and 100+ year old firs and cedars.
Today, I discovered a pretty big (about 0.5-0.75 acres) swamp/pond on the other side of the hill:
A marsh/pond in the forests of the Selkirk Mountains of N. Idaho - there be ducks here!
I was crawling around on a game trail on the shore, and not really paying attention, and suddenly scared a female duck up and didn’t have time to snap a photograph of her. But just as I was cursing myself for not having the camera ready, this guy popped up right in front of my face:
Common Garter Snake (Thamnophis sirtalis), full body shot
He’s a common garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis), and they tend to live near ponds and eat salamanders and frogs and insects, and whatnot. He was really calm, and let me sit there shooting pictures of him for about 4 minutes — fortunately the dogs were too busy mucking around in the swamp to notice me oddly staring at the ground for so long. Here’s a closeup:
Common Garter Snake, closeup of head, from left side
About 1/4 mile from our house is a beautiful little area that I call “Cedar Grove”. It only covers about 10-15 acres, is surrounded by clearcuts, and it’s struggling hard to stay alive with all of the destruction around it.
But you can tell when you’re in it, that if they’d just leave the forest alone out here, that this place would seed life back into the area really quickly, and make it into a rainforest again.
This is what the forest looks like in there:
A picture of the open forest in "Cedar Grove"
And here’s a picture of one of the many marshy areas that are in it, full of devils club and wild ginger:
Marshy area full of devils club and wild ginger, in "Cedar Grove"
Of course, the photos don’t do it justice …
(Source: CNET)
Americans arrested but not convicted of some crimes would be likely to have their DNA forcibly extracted and added to an FBI database, according to new legislation passed by 357 to 32 vote in the House …
(Source: PR Watch)
New report out shows that drone strikes in Pakistan (large majority of which have taken place since Obama got into office), have killed between 750-1000 Pakistani civilians, and are fueling an upswell in the insurgency, due to the ammunition this gives militant resistant groups in the media war.