המועדפים של amdurso

Aberrant coloration. At first we thought it was a N. fasciata x N. clarkii hybrid but the dorsal pattern is too banded (not stripey) and the ventral pattern is unstriped but not plain, albeit very low contrast (orange vs yellow half-moons). Compare a few other "hypomelanistic" N. fasciata from nearby:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/67151325

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/109373290

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/70033204

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/67151325

Found dead on the side of the road. It was dead for a few days by the time I took photos.

A few side notes: The body was roughly 6 inches long, with an oddly short tail. Considering the bloating and decomposition, this was still a stocky and odd rodent from what I see. I immediatly scratched off black rats and norway rats as the tail was too short, and I ended up by process of elimination finding the round-tailed muskrat the closest option.

Both barbouri and ernsti occur within this stretch of river. Hybrids do exist, but pure forms of parental species occur as well. (Godwin et al 2014). This individual showed characteristics of barbouri (short nose, chin bar, and those orange-ish tips to the vertebrals)

Rough Greensnake catching an orbweaver spider. It got close to the web and then stayed there for what felt like 10 minutes (not sure it was waiting to figure out how to catch the spider or because I had disturbed it). After a while, it finally caught the spider and seemed to have no trouble eating it. My first time seeing a wild snake catch its prey!

Another looted kill site... i only found a few secondaries and a lot of body feathers but no tail or primaries, for the second time in a row! Because of a big lack of data it is hard to determine if it was male or female. The individual was at least 2cy. Limited to no barring on scapulars, plain gray rump and marginals, barred underwing, breast and undertail and uppertail coverts. Tertials, an inner secondary and and some uppertail coverts were replaced and the replaced wing feathers don't have any bars at all. Right wing secondary has bars so if this is 2cy+ then it's a female, if 2cy then males are still possible. Secondary coverts had limited barring on the edge