Saturday, April 24, 2021
Great Wiggling Balls of Garter Snakes! ©
 |
An Eastern Garter snake, photograph by the Author.
Two
weekends ago, it was sunny and almost 80oF (27oC) and we
were on a ten mile (16 kilometer) hike, in Reinstein Woods Nature Preserve, a
New York State Preserve, located in Depew, New York, when we started to find
snakes...lots of snakes!
 |
A map of Reinstein Woods Nature Preserve, which can be found HERE.
Great Wiggling Balls of Garter
Snakes...
 |
A close up of some Eastern Garter snakes, wiggling in a ball, photograph by the Author.
And
then we saw it, a big ball of twisting, wiggling garter snakes close to the
path.
It
was the first warm day of spring and I have never seen that many snakes all in
one spot together. I knew that they must
be just coming out of hibernation. At
first, I thought that they were rolling around together, because they were
still cold, but when I did some research, I found that just wasn’t so....
But
before I get to what they were doing, let’s talk about Eastern Garter snakes, how
I knew that that is what they were and about what these snakes do to survive
the cold winters of northeastern United States and Canada.
 |
Eastern Garter snakes, photograph by the Author.
Eastern Garter snakes...
Eastern
Garter snakes, thamnophis sirtalis, are the most common snake to be
found in New York state. Its scientific
name comes from the Greek word “thamnos” or "bush" and “ophio”
which means "snake", and the Latin word “sirtalis” or "like
a garter". Besides being called the
Eastern Garter snake or the Common Garter snake, depending on what part of
North America you are from, they are also known as an adder, a blue spotted
snake, a broad garter snake, Churchhill's garter snake, a common streaked
snake, a common striped snake, a dusky garter snake, a garden snake, a grass
garter snake, a green spotted garter snake, and a hooped snake1.
Eastern Garter snake or an Eastern
Ribbon Snake...
So
how did you I know that these were Eastern Garter snakes and not the similar
looking Eastern Ribbon snake?
 |
The range of the Eastern Garter and the Eastern Ribbon snake, adapted from “Eastern Garter Snake (Thamnophis sirtalis)”, by Amelia Gleaton and “Eastern Ribbon Snake (Thamnophis sauritus)”, by Christina Baker, found HERE and HERE.
Both
the Eastern Garter snake and the Eastern Ribbon snake, thamnophis sauritus,
can be found throughout most of eastern North America, with ranges that extend
from Florida into Canada and west throughout the Mississippi watershed. Because they both have three yellow stripes
running up and down their bodies, and are about the same size, at 16-28 inches
(41 to 71 cm) long; it is easiest to identify them by looking at their head
markings.
 |
Note the olive-green heads and yellowish upper lip scales, with vertical black marks, and the absence of vertical black and white lines before and after the eyes of these Eastern Garter snakes, photograph by the Author.
The
easiest way to identify a snake as an Eastern Garter snake, is to look for its olive-green
head, yellowish upper lip scales (called supralabial scales), with black vertical
marks on the edges, and additionally these snakes do not have a black line
behind, or a white bar in front of their eyes.
Also, on their bodies, look for three yellowish stripes, which run down
the length of the green, black, or brown body of the snake, one down the center
of the back and one down each side. The stripes
along the sides of the snake are low, occurring on scale rows, two and three. Sometimes sections of the stripes can be
missing and sometimes a checkerboard pattern is visible on the sides between
the stripes.
To
identify a snake as an Eastern Ribbon snake, look for a white upper lip, a head
that is reddish-brown on top, a straight black line behind and a vertical white
bar in front of each eye, and moreover Eastern Ribbon snakes do not have any
black marks on their lip scales. Like
the garter snake, Eastern Ribbon snakes have three yellowish stripes running
the length of their dark colored bodies, although these stripes are higher up
on their sides and are found on scale rows, three and four.
 |
An Eastern Garter snake, photograph by the Author.
“Brumation” and hibernacula...
It
is cold during the winters in the northeastern parts of the United States and
Canada, far too cold for an ectotherm (cold-blooded) snake to survive without
hibernation, or as it is called in reptiles “brumation”, and that is
just what garter snakes do! Eastern
Garter snakes, like other snakes, overwinter in old chipmunk or woodchuck dens,
old stone walls, building foundations, or rock piles; these brumation sites are
called “hibernacula”. The best
hibernaculum are below the local frost line or have a southern exposure and
receive enough radiant heat from the Sun to prevent the snakes from
freezing. Dozens of snakes will den in a
good site and will return to it year after year. Also, congregating together helps the snakes
to retain moisture. Before entering
brumation, a snake will stop eating for a couple of weeks, and once they enter
the hibernacula and begin to brumate, their heartbeat, respiration and
metabolism all slow down, and their temperature drops to between 35o
to 45oF (2o to 7oC). Eastern Garter snakes brumate (hibernate) from
late October through late March to early April.
Once
Spring arrives, the male snakes leave the hibernacula first and wait for the
females to leave. Once the females leave
the den, the males which emit pheromones to attract the females, surround them
in a wiggling snake ball! And that gets
us to the question of just what were they doing?
Well,
you probably guessed it, they were having wild snake sex!
So
next year, in the last few days of March or the first couple of days of April,
take to the woods and look for Eastern Garter snakes just leaving their winter
dens and rolling around in great wiggling balls of garter snakes. If you don’t want to wait until next year to
find the snakes leaving their den, watch my video “Great Wiggling Balls of
Garter Snakes”, HERE.
 |
Eastern Garter snakes, photograph by the Author.
Don’t forget to come back next week and read “Best By Date©”, where we
will talk about if that food you found in your survival kit, the back of your cupboard,
or that box is still good.
I
hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and look for me
on YouTube at Bandanaman Productions for other related videos, HERE. Don’t forget to follow me on both The
Woodsman’s Journal Online, HERE,
and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube. If you have questions, as always, feel free
to leave a comment on either site. I
announce new articles on Facebook at Eric Reynolds, on Instagram at
bandanamanaproductions, and on VK at Eric Reynolds, so watch for me.
That
is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!
Notes
1 In
this otherwise excellent resource, they mentioned that the eastern garter snake
is also known as a “brown snake”, which maybe it is, however the brown
snake is actually its own species and for more information on brown snakes read
“Watch Your Step! ©”, HERE,
or watch my video about the brown snake I almost stepped on, HERE.
From
“Eastern Gartersnake, Thamnophis
sirtalis sirtalis”, The Official State Snake of Virginia”, by the Virginia
Herpetological Society,
Sources
Baker, Christina and edited by Willson, J.D.; “Eastern Ribbon Snake
(Thamnophis sauritus)” Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, University of
Georgia, https://srelherp.uga.edu/snakes/thasau.htm, accessed April 16, 2021
Gleaton, Amelia and edited by Willson, J.D.; “Eastern
Garter Snake (Thamnophis sirtalis)” Savannah
River Ecology Laboratory, University of Georgia, https://srelherp.uga.edu/snakes/thasir.htm, accessed April 16,
2021
Mitchell, Sandra; “Where
Do Snakes Go In Winter?”, March 19, 2020, The Adirondack Almanack, https://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2020/03/where-do-snakes-go-in-winter.html, accessed April 16, 2021
O’Roark, Patrick; “Earth Matters: Garter snakes emerge for their grand
coming-out party in March and April”, February 23, 2018, Daily Hampshire
Gazette [Northampton, MA, © 2020 by H.S. Gere & Sons, Inc.], https://www.gazettenet.com/earth-matters-15670295, accessed April 16, 2021
The Royal Canadian Geographical Society, “Animal Facts:
Common garter snake”, Canadian
Geographic, [© 2020 Canadian Geographic Enterprises], https://www.canadiangeographic.ca/article/animal-facts-common-garter-snake, accessed April 16, 2021
Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife, “Common Garter
Snake”, [Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife,
Montpelier, VT, © 2021 State of Vermont]
https://vtfishandwildlife.com/learn-more/vermont-critters/reptiles/common-garter-snake,
accessed April 16, 2021
“Common Gartersnake, Thamnophis sirtalis” [© 2021 Vermont Reptile and
Amphibian Atlas], https://www.vtherpatlas.org/herp-species-in-vermont/thamnophis-sirtalis/, accessed April 16, 2021
Virginia Herpetological Society, “Eastern Gartersnake, Thamnophis
sirtalis sirtalis”, The Official State Snake of Virginia”, [© 2021 Virginia Herpetological Society], https://www.virginiaherpetologicalsociety.com/reptiles/snakes/eastern-gartersnake/eastern_gartersnake.php, accessed April 16, 2021
Sunday, April 18, 2021
Never Give In. Never, Never, Never...©
Pamela Sullivan, from a “Girl Tells Of Struggle For Survival”, September 20, 1971, Daily News, HERE.
When
it comes to survival; training and having the proper tools isn’t enough, more
important by far is the will to survive.
You must never give in. In the
immortal words of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, at Harrow School, on
October 29, 19411, “Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never – in nothing,
great or small, large or petty – never give in, except to convictions of honour
and good sense. Never yield to
force. Never yield to the apparently
overwhelming might of the enemy”
Pamela
Sullivan, who was 18 in 1971, never gave in.
In her written statement, after she was rescued from the Three Sisters
wilderness of central Oregon, she recalled thinking “I just wanted to
live. I kept thinking of home and my
parents and all of the people I love. I
wouldn’t allow myself to die”. And
she didn’t die, because thinking of her family and wanting to live is what
drove her on, even when her two companions succumbed to hypothermia, aggravated
by fear and depression.
The Will To Survive...
An excerpt from Survival: Training Edition, AF Manual 64-3, 1969, by the US Air Force, page 1-6.
Many
people who spend time in the outdoors become fixated on having the best or latest,
new-fangled survival gadget and reading all the latest survival books, and
while all of that is helpful, it is not what is going to save you in wilderness
survival emergency. According to a
Stanford Research Institute study on success, which in a wilderness emergency
is survival, success is 88% attitude and 12% training or education. This statistic is echoed by Gene Fear, who
was quoted in “Kids Can Survive In the Wild” by Steve Scarano, as saying “Survival
is 80 percent attitude, 10 percent equipment and 10 percent skill”2. So how do you improve your will to survive?
The
first thing that you must do is to not give into fear and anxiety. Conscious fears, which are fears of a real
event or a possible event, can be a good thing, as it can sharpen your mind and
help you avoid the very real possibilities for disaster before you. However unconscious fear, or anxiety, is
something that is to be avoided as it will sap your mental strength and dull
your ability to deal with real world problems as they confront you. Anxiety is often created in your mind as part
of a negative-what-if feedback loop, this loop or spiral, is created when
someone assumes that the worst will happen or when you believe that you’re in a
worse situation than you really are, or when your mind exaggerates the
difficulties that are in front of you.
It is also called “catastrophizing”, by mental health care
providers.
 |
Excerpts from Survival: Training Edition, AF Manual 64-3, 1969, by the US Air Force, page 1-9 to 1-10.
Many
survival experts suggest that you include a picture or pictures of your family,
or your children and other loved ones in your survival kit, to motivate you to
never give up. Many survivors of
wilderness emergencies, besides Pamela Sullivan, credit thinking of their
family as the thing that kept them motivated to survive, having some pictures
with you will be more inspiring and make it easier to stay motivated and keep
from giving in to fear and depression.
Lastly,
there are two other survival lessons that can be learned from this tragedy,
besides the importance of never giving in.
In the article Pamela mentioned having a wool cap and apparently her two
companions did not.
Survival
lesson number one is heat loss from your bare head can be 50%
at 40oF or 4oC and 75% at 5oF or -15oC,
and if you are wet you will lose even more.
Having a knit cap in a pack or a pocket, rain or shine, summer or winter
can save your life! I always carry a
knit cap with me whenever I go out into the wilderness.
Survival
lesson number two is you must be careful of wet weather, and not only when the
temperature is low. Hypothermia, the
dangerous lowering of the body’s core temperature can creep up on you3. Apparently in Ms. Sullivan and her companions’s
case, they and their equipment had gotten soaked, and they had waited too long
before finding or returning to shelter.
Wearing wet clothes will increase the conductive heat loss you
experience, since water conducts heat away from your body 25 times faster than
air. Because of this, wet clothes will
pull your body heat away from you by conduction far faster thank inf they were
dry. Also, wet clothes will increase the
evaporative heat loss you experience, and evaporation is a very effective way
of getting rid of heat. And lastly wet
clothes, because the tiny air trapping spaces, or loft, are now filled with
water, are less insulative than if they were dry.
The entire a “Girl Tells Of Struggle For Survival”, September 20, 1971, Daily News, can be read HERE.
Remember,
in survival, or in anything really, never, never, never...never give in!
Don’t forget to come back next week and read “Great Rolling Balls of
Garter Snakes©”, where we will talk about Garter Snakes, hibernation and just
what were they doing in that writhing ball of snakes!
I
hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and look for me
on YouTube at Bandanaman Productions for other related videos, HERE. Don’t forget to follow me on both The
Woodsman’s Journal Online, HERE,
and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube. If you have questions, as always, feel free
to leave a comment on either site. I
announce new articles on Facebook at Eric Reynolds, on Instagram at
bandanamanaproductions, and on VK at Eric Reynolds, so watch for me.
That
is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!
Notes
1
From “Prime Minister Winston
Churchill's address to Harrow School on October 29, 1941”
2 “Kids Can Survive In the Wild” by Steve Scarano, was
originally printed in the Family Safe magazine, before being reprinted
in October 1989 edition of Scouting magazine and can be found HERE
3 Hypothermia is a condition where your body’s
core temperature decreases, and when this begins you need to watch for what
Matt Heid, the author of “Warning Signs of Hypothermia: Know Your “Umbles”,
calls the “umbles”; the fumbles, stumbles, mumbles and grumbles.
Mild hypothermia, which is when your core body
temperature drops below 98.6oF and begins to drift down to 95o
F (37oC descending to 35oC). The symptoms of mild hypothermia are intense,
but controllable shivering, cold and numb hands, or as Matt Heid says, “the
fumbles”.
Moderate hypothermia is when your core body
temperature falls below 95oF and descends towards 90oF
(35oC to 32oC) and its symptoms are uncontrollable
shivering, confusion and movements that become slow and labored, or what Matt
Heid calls, “the stumbles, mumbles and grumbles”.
Severe hypothermia begins when the person’s
core body temperature drops below 90oF (32oC). At this point the person becomes confused,
their muscles become rigid, and walking becomes impossible, their heart and
respiration rate both decreases, and they may become unconscious. If the person’s core body temperature continues
to decrease, they will go into cardiac arrest and likely die.
In the past, the best practice for treating
moderate to severe hypothermia was to put the hypothermic person inside a
sleeping bag and warm them up with direct skin-to-skin contact. However, according to author Rick Curtis, in “Hypothermia:
Field Assessment and Treatment”, as reprinted from The Backpacker's Field
Manual, the current best practice for treating moderate to severe
hypothermia is as follows:
“Make sure the patient is dry and has a
wicking inner layer next to the skin to minimize sweating. Use a plastic garbage bag as a diaper to
prevent urine from soaking the insulation layers. The person must be protected from any moisture
in the environment. Use multiple sleeping bags, blankets, clothing, foam pads,
etc. to create a minimum of 4 inches (10 centimeters) of insulation all the way
around the patient, especially between the patient and the ground. Use foam pads to insulate the person from the
ground. Include an aluminum space
blanket to help prevent radiant heat loss if you have one. Wrap the entire ensemble in something
waterproof like a tarp or tent rainfly to protect from wind and water. Your patient will look like she is in a giant
burrito with only her face exposed.”2.
Additionally, Rick Curtis, says that even
though the hypothermic person’s stomach has shut down and therefore will not be
able to digest solid food, like a PowerBar®, it can still absorb dilute sugars
and water, and this will give the person the energy necessary to rewarm themselves. Give the person a diluted mix of warm water
and sugar or Jello® every fifteen minutes, if they are conscious and able to
swallow. Do not give the person alcohol,
because it is a vasodilator and will increase heat loss, or drinks containing
caffeine, which is vasoconstrictor, that will increase the chances of
peripheral frostbite.
The best field test to assess if someone is
hypothermic, is to have the person walk 30 feet in a straight line, if they are
unable to walk that distance without weaving or stumbling, then they might be
hypothermic. Per Rick Curtis, in “Hypothermia:
Field Assessment and Treatment”, another way to assess if someone is
hypothermic is to ask them a question that requires higher thinking, such as counting
backwards from 100 by 9: if they are hypothermic, they won’t be able to do it.
An
excerpt from “Test Your Survival Knowledge, Part Three ©”, which can be found HERE.
Sources
Department
Of The Air Force, Survival: Training Edition, AF
Manual 64-3, [Headquarters, US Air Force,
Washington, DC, August 15, 1969], page 1-6 https://books.google.com/books?id=UaapWEpqo4cC&pg=RA1-SA4-PA3&dq=Survival:+Training+Edition,+AF+Manual+64-3&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwinjcSEzPzvAhWNF1kFHX3ZAOUQ6AEwAHoECAIQAg#v=onepage&q=Survival%3A%20Training%20Edition%2C%20AF%20Manual%2064-3&f=false,
accessed April 13, 2021
Gillman, Steven; Backpacking
Survival Kit, [BoundaryWatersCanoeArea.com, © 2014 E Warren Communications], http://bwca.cc/activities/hiking/articles/backpackingsurvivalkit.html,
accessed April 13, 2021
“Girl Tells Of Struggle
For Survival”, September 20, 1971, Daily News, [Bowling Green, Kentucky], page
9, https://books.google.com/books?id=0rsdAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA36&dq=%22girl+tells+of+struggle+for+survival%22&article_id=7072,3837868&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj4jaSkoOrvAhWDMlkFHZX5A44Q6AEwAHoECAAQAg#v=onepage&q=%22girl%20tells%20of%20struggle%20for%20survival%22&f=false, accessed April 6, 2021
“Prime
Minister Winston Churchill's address to Harrow School on October 29, 1941”, http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~jcslee/poetry/churchill_nevergivein.html#:~:text=Never%20give%20in.-,Never%20give%20in.,overwhelming%20might%20of%20the%20enemy,
accessed April 6, 2021
San Pascual, Jeanne; “Why
Attitude Is The Most Important Thing In Success”, February 26, 2015; [© 2021
The Thought & Expression Company, LLC], https://thoughtcatalog.com/jeanne-san-pascual/2015/02/why-attitude-is-the-most-important-thing-in-success/#:~:text=According%20to%20a%20Stanford%20Research,attitude%20and%20only%2012%25%20education,
accessed April 13, 2021
Scarano,
Steve, “Kids Can Survive In the Wild”, Scouting, October 1989, Vol. 77,
No. 5, [Boy Scouts of America, Irving, TX], https://books.google.com/books?id=oz06AQAAIAAJ&pg=RA11-PA36&dq=%22steve+scarano%22+%22richard+sparks%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj6s72aybnhAhUSrVkKHV7cBjcQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=%22steve%20scarano%22%20%22richard%20sparks%22&f=false,
accessed April 14, 2021
Survival kit Items –
PHOTOS, [© 2019 Off Grid Survival], https://offgridsurvival.com/photos/,
accessed April 13, 2021
Curtis, Rick; “Hypothermia: Field Assessment and Treatment”, reprinted
from The Backpacker's Field Manual [© 2015 Outdoor Ed LLC], https://www.outdoored.com/articles/hypothermia-field-assessment-and-treatment, accessed September 18, 2020
Heid, Matt, “Warning Signs of Hypothermia:
Know Your “Umbles”, February 11, 2014, AMC Outdoors, [© 2020 Appalachian
Mountain Club], http://www.outdoors.org/articles/amc-outdoors/warning-signs-of-hypothermia-know-your/, accessed December 7, 2017
Sunday, April 11, 2021
A Walk in the Gorge, a Seiche and Stranded Fish©
The cliffs in the Niagara River gorge, photograph by the Author.
You
never know what you are going to find when you step outside and into the
wilderness, sometimes you find nothing at all, and sometimes, well, you find
strange things, maybe even things that you have never seen before. And it always starts with a walk in the
wilderness, or in this case a walk in the gorge...
A Walk in the Gorge...
The Niagara River, below the Whirlpool, from the trail, photograph by the Author.
Last
weekend we decided to go on a walk with Boy Scout Troop 285, along the lower Niagara
River. The day started out cold and
overcast, but by about 3:00 pm, it was sunny, without a cloud in the sky, and it
was almost 60oF (16oC).
We started walking at the top of the cliffs along the gorge, from
Whirlpool State Park, on the American side of the river, before walking along
the gorge by the river. This is a great
walk and the trail along the river can be reached by climbing down almost 300
feet (91 meters) of stairs built into the cliff sides along the gorge. When we got down to the riverside, we turned
west to walk upriver to the area of the Whirlpool.
An excerpt from a map by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, it can be found HERE.
A Seiche...
How wind driven seiches occur, a NOAA illustration, found HERE.
So,
“what is a seiche”, you might ask?
That is a good question!
A
seiche (pronounced “saysh”) is caused, according to the American National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, when strong winds and rapid
changes in atmospheric pressure push the water from one end of a body of water
to the other end, raising the level of the water and causing flooding. When the wind stops the water quickly returns
to its original level and the flooding, literally, just drains away! Lake Erie is known for seiches, particularly
when strong winds blow from the southwest to the northeast1.
The
day before our walk in the gorge, on Friday, March 26, 2021, the Western New
York area experienced strong winds, blowing from the southwest, which caused a
seiche. According to the National
Weather Service the “WATER LEVEL AT BUFFALO NOS GAGE REACHED 8.4 FEET ABOVE LOW
WATER DATUM”; 8.4 feet (2.6 meters) above low water level is a lot of water
being pushed towards the Buffalo, New York end of Lake Erie and then down the
Niagara River!
Where we found evidence of a seiche.
It
was when we got to the shelf of rock, which is across from the Whirlpool, that
we found evidence of the seiche.
Stranded Fish...
A Rainbow Trout (which is also known as a Steelhead Salmon) stranded by the seiche in a rock pool, photograph by the Author.
All
the water that was pushed to the end of Lake Erie had to go somewhere, and the
somewhere it went, was down the Niagara River.
Because of the seiche, the water level below Niagara Falls had risen enough
that fish were able to swim above the rock ledge which is across from the
Whirlpool – a ledge that is usually several feet above water level! When the winds stopped blowing, the seiche
ended and the water in the western portion Lake Erie dropped back to its normal
level, and the flood waters in the Niagara River receded so quickly that there
a lot of fish got caught in rock pools and cracks all over this ledge!
Rainbow Trout left stranded by the seiche in a rock pool, after the water drained away, photograph by the Author.
Most
of the fish were dead and all appeared to be Rainbow Trout or as they are also
known Steelhead Salmon, (oncorhynchus mykiss)2. Rainbow Trout and
Steelhead Salmon are the same species, but they look different and have vastly
different lifestyles. Rainbow Trout
spend their entire life in freshwater, and are green, blue, and yellow, fading
to silvery white on their bellies, with a horizontal pinkish-red stripe running
from their tails all the way to their gills, and with black spots along their
backs. Steelhead Salmon are anadromous, which
means that they spend the first two to three years of their life in freshwater,
before migrating to the ocean and then living for two to three years in saltwater,
before returning to the freshwater river of their birth to breed. They are silvery or brassy colored as adults
and are not as colorful as their fresh-water-only cousins. Adult Rainbow Trout and Steelhead Salmon
range in size and weight and while they can reach up to 45 inches (114 cm) in
length, they are usually much smaller. Larger
Rainbow Trout and Steelhead
Salmon can weigh more than 50 pounds (22 kilograms), but usually their weight
is 8 pounds (almost 4 kilograms).
Steelhead Salmon, since they spend part of their life in the ocean, however,
are usually larger than Rainbow Trout.
An excerpt from the signboard posted in the Casino Building at the Whirlpool State Park, photograph by the Author.
Interestingly,
Rainbow Trout and Steelhead Salmon are not native to the east coast and the
inland waterways of North America, they are originally native to the Pacific
Northwest coast of North America and according to Richard D. Moccia and David
J. Bevan, in “The Rainbow Trout”, it is “generally accepted that the first
movement of rainbow trout occurred to New York State in 1874 from a native
spring spawning stock from Campbells Creek on the McLeod River, California”
and that the person who first brought the fish to New York state was a fish
culturist named Seth Green. Rainbow
Trout are now found in eastern North America throughout the Great Lakes Basin
and in the Canadian provinces of Ontario, Newfoundland, New Brunswick, and Nova
Scotia.
A picture of a live Rainbow Trout, captured in a rock pool by Bill Ziegler, before being released back into the Niagara River. Note the size of the fish. Photograph by the Author and used with the permission of Bill Ziegler.
Not
all the fish in the rock pools were dead, however, and we were able to capture five
and release them back into the Niagara River.
A video of a live Rainbow Trout swimming about in a
large rock pool.
All
in all, it was a great walk, the scenery and the weather were fantastic, and I
got to see things I had never seen before; I can’t wait to go back again!
Some of the scenery along the trail, photograph by the Author.
Don’t forget to come back next week and read “Never Give In. Never, Never, Never... ©”, where we will talk
about survival and the all-important will to live.
I
hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and look for me
on YouTube at Bandanaman Productions for other related videos, HERE. Don’t forget to follow me on both The
Woodsman’s Journal Online, HERE,
and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube. If you have questions, as always, feel free
to leave a comment on either site. I
announce new articles on Facebook at Eric Reynolds, on Instagram at
bandanamanaproductions, and on VK at Eric Reynolds, so watch for me.
That
is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!
Notes
1 From
“What is a seiche?”, by the National Ocean Service.
2
According to Richard D. Moccia and David J. Bevan, in “The
Rainbow Trout”, these fish used to be called salmo gairdneri.
Sources
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Rainbow Trout”, [OAC Publication 1991, July 1991], https://animalbiosciences.uoguelph.ca/aquacentre/information/articles/the-rainbow-trout.html,
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