Posted: 9/5/2012 6:45:11 AM EDT
| At the begining of Summer I saw one Black Snake on the W O and D trail. Yesterday while bicycling to work from Chantilly to Fairfax, I saw 4 snakes on the road. Has anybody else notice an influx serpants in NOVA. Was Yesterday national Snake day? |
|
Quoted:
Leave the black/rat snakes alone, they will kill off or run off the venomous snakes and the rodents. OTOH the timber rattlers get killed. This little guy is my daughter's: http://i477.photobucket.com/albums/rr136/efillc/Charlene/IMG_8462.jpg Cool Kingsnake! The only black snake that will actually kill venomous snakes is the Black Kingsnake. In WV, it's uncommon and only found in the southwest portion of the state (Lincoln, Wayne, Putnam). Black Ratsnakes have actually been known to overwinter in the same dens as copperheads and rattlesnakes. Shouldn't kill them still for a variety of reasons. |
| Its been 2 years since I have been on the WO&D but use to ride it almost weekly in the spring and summer for 6 years prior. Used to the see black snakes all the time on the trail. They seem to like to sun themselves on the pavement. Some days would not not see any while others it hard to keep from hit them. |
|
My next-door neighbor killed two yesterday, one in her house, and one on her front porch.
ID's are unknown. The smaller one, in the house, was only five or six inches long, and dark gray to black, with a narrow whitish collar just behind the head. The one found outside appeared to me to be a copperhead. Looked similar to the pic above. It was about a foot long, and about the diameter of a wood pencil. It was mangled so badly and bug-eaten when my neighbor showed it to me, that I couldn't ID it. I don't care what kind it is, if found in my house, it dies. If not by me, the cats will do it. Outside, unless I know it's venomous, it gets a pass. ( I did kill an 16" copperhead in the front yard a couple of months ago) |
|
Quoted:
Quoted:
Leave the black/rat snakes alone, they will kill off or run off the venomous snakes and the rodents. OTOH the timber rattlers get killed. This little guy is my daughter's: http://i477.photobucket.com/albums/rr136/efillc/Charlene/IMG_8462.jpg Cool Kingsnake! The only black snake that will actually kill venomous snakes is the Black Kingsnake. In WV, it's uncommon and only found in the southwest portion of the state (Lincoln, Wayne, Putnam). Black Ratsnakes have actually been known to overwinter in the same dens as copperheads and rattlesnakes. Shouldn't kill them still for a variety of reasons. We have a few out here. We used to have rattlers around here but when the black snakes moved in, the rattlers have disappeared. Yeah, the kidlets king is a really neat little guy. |
|
last week up near Elk Horn lake.... 
early this summer in the tool shed.... 
i'll let non-venomous snakes do what they want. if they get in the house i simply take them out. rattlers get a free pass, i'll relocate any that i find near the house and only kill one if it's 100% necessary. copperheads are on my *shoot on sight* list.... i hate copper heads! |
|
Quoted:
last week up near Elk Horn lake.... http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii180/ArmedSuspect/imagejpeg_2_4.jpg early this summer in the tool shed.... http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii180/ArmedSuspect/IMAG0093-1.jpg i'll let non-venomous snakes do what they want. if they get in the house i simply take them out. rattlers get a free pass, i'll relocate any that i find near the house and only kill one if it's 100% necessary. copperheads are on my *shoot on sight* list.... i hate copper heads! Pretty cool pics... I have lived in VA since 1993, and I have never once seen a Copperhead alive. Yes I am out in the woods and i fish. Saw two dead onces at Fort Picket one year after one of the OPFOR guys jumped in a foxhole and found two of them in there with him. He bashed their heads in with his M-14. It was cool to see the bodies move for a coupl hours even though the heads were flat like paper. I lived in Colorado for 8 years and only saw one Rattler. Is there a place in or around NOVA where you ahve a pretty good chance of seeing copperheads? |
|
Quoted:
Quoted:
last week up near Elk Horn lake.... http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii180/ArmedSuspect/imagejpeg_2_4.jpg early this summer in the tool shed.... http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii180/ArmedSuspect/IMAG0093-1.jpg i'll let non-venomous snakes do what they want. if they get in the house i simply take them out. rattlers get a free pass, i'll relocate any that i find near the house and only kill one if it's 100% necessary. copperheads are on my *shoot on sight* list.... i hate copper heads! Pretty cool pics... I have lived in VA since 1993, and I have never once seen a Copperhead alive. Yes I am out in the woods and i fish. Saw two dead onces at Fort Picket one year after one of the OPFOR guys jumped in a foxhole and found two of them in there with him. He bashed their heads in with his M-14. It was cool to see the bodies move for a coupl hours even though the heads were flat like paper. I lived in Colorado for 8 years and only saw one Rattler. Is there a place in or around NOVA where you ahve a pretty good chance of seeing copperheads? It's not in NOVA but in the Eastern Panhandle... Go visit Sleepy Creek WMA in Berkeley County. Walk around the lake. You'll see plenty of them as well as water snakes, black snakes, rattlers, etc. Here's a rattler I got some pics of year before last... 
|
|
Nice pics guys!
I found 7 weekend before last under the same rock on a mountain above Paint Creek. 2 adult females and 5 babies, and one of the females was still gravid. My camera is still in the shop though, so I didn't get any pics. They weren't real pretty ones anyway. ETA: I'm always looking for good spots to find and photograph rattlesnakes, if any of you guys know some good spots. I'll have to check out Sleepy Creek sometime. |
|
Quoted:
Not to derail this thread but you guys take some good pictures. thinking about getting a nice DSLR camera. been looking at the kits at BJ's to start photographing things. Any suggestions? How much do you want to spend? If I were starting out I would get one that gives you a lot of room to advance. I would most likely get a D7000, or wait for the next equivalent model to come out. It should be due soon. If you like taking close up shots of reptiles, you'll want a macro lens to go with it. Found this female copperhead while chain sawing a few weeks ago. 
Northern Copperhead by James Stanton, on Flickr This was a Bluntheaded Treesnake I found in Ecuador earlier in the summer. 
bluntheadedsnake-1 by James Stanton, on Flickr |
|
Quoted:
Quoted:
Not to derail this thread but you guys take some good pictures. thinking about getting a nice DSLR camera. been looking at the kits at BJ's to start photographing things. Any suggestions? How much do you want to spend? If I were starting out I would get one that gives you a lot of room to advance. I would most likely get a D7000, or wait for the next equivalent model to come out. It should be due soon. If you like taking close up shots of reptiles, you'll want a macro lens to go with it. Found this female copperhead while chain sawing a few weeks ago. [email=mailto:http://www.flickr.com/photos/42540104@N07/7721131954/]http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8423/7721131954_b4ede38fea_b.jpg[/email] Northern Copperhead by James Stanton, on Flickr This was a Bluntheaded Treesnake I found in Ecuador earlier in the summer. [email=mailto:http://www.flickr.com/photos/42540104@N07/7376893684/]http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5194/7376893684_67ba5e238e_b.jpg[/email] bluntheadedsnake-1 by James Stanton, on Flickr Probably in the 7-9 range. They had some cool looking packages at BJs one was a Canon Ti ? Retailed for like 1199.00 but had a manufacture rebate of 300 rebate. and the other was a Nikon was I think 1099 with a 200 rebate. One was a 1080, is there a camera cheat sheet for dummies, i mean don't even know what to look for in the pixel numbers. Btw that is an awesome pic of a coperhead the detail and colors are awesome. |
|
I don't know as much about the Canon line up. Sony has some nice DSLRs too these days.
The $1000 range Nikon is the D7000. DPreview.com is like the Arfcom of photography. It's a good place to get reviews on certain products. IMO, I think the most important thing you can do is learn how to shoot with manual exposure settings. There is a book called "Understanding Exposure" that I would highly recommend reading as soon as you get your camera. It would have saved me a lot of time in the beginning. It's a quick and easy read too. I would also recommend getting a copy of Adobe Lightroom. Doing some post-processing on your photos can make a world of difference. |
| I know this puts me in a small minority, but I shoot Pentax. The K-5 (rumored to be about to receive an update) is one of the best APS-C cameras available from anyone, and it's $879. Its high-ISO performance is superb (which is why I NEED one, but haven't yet been able to convince Mrs. Glarus). Pentax's "Limited" lenses are remarkably compact, reasonably fast (DA line) to fast (FA line) primes that feature all-metal construction and excellent image quality. The company drives us nuts with its pricing antics (since Ricoh acquired Pentax, Pentax USA has been raising DA* ("DA star") lens prices to obscene levels and then lowering them again,) and there is, for now, no full-frame body, but every time I think about switching to Nikon or Canon, I look at their ridiculously huge, expensive, plastic lenses and I'm happy again with what I have. Pentax bodies are also stabilized, which means every lens I own, regardless of age or focal length, is stabilized. If money, bulk and weight were no object, I would probably shoot a Nikon D800. For a great, affordable travel & around the house kit, I wouldn't have anything but Pentax. With the fantastic glass, my old K20d does everything I need it to, except in low light without a tripod (at ISO 800 there's too much noise for anything but posting pics to the web). The main knocks against Pentax are that it's hard to find in brick and mortars, there's no full-frame body, and the longest current lens offering is 300mm. A 560mm is on the way. On the other hand, buying a consumer/prosumer grade camera because a manufacturer happens to also have a professional line makes no sense, unless you plan to upgrade that far. Third-party lens manufacturers Sigma and Tamron also do not offer their full lines in the Pentax K mount, but aside from Tamron's 90mm macro lens, I haven't found the need for third-party glass anyway. The now-discontinued K-x can be had cheaply on the Pentax forum if you keep an eye on the marketplace, and it's known for superior high-ISO performance. I think I saw one for $300 a few days ago. |