A rafter of wild turkeys relaxing on Montini Open Space Preserve last evening, fate working in their favor another year.
Happy Thanksgiving to you all; we hope to see you on the trail during this very lush, thriving time on Montini and the Overlook!
Category Archives: Wildlife
Snake Chat: A Conversation with Local Reptile Educator Galen Freed-Wilhem
TRANSCRIPT:
[Sonoma Overlook Trail]
Welcome to the Sonoma Overlook Trail podcast. I’m Jess from the Overlook Trail Stewards.
In honor of the Chinese New Year of the Wood Snake, my guest today is Galen Freed-Wilhelm, a local snake handler and reptile educator. In addition to his love for reptiles, he has a deep passion for environmental causes and actually received the Youth Environmental Award from Sonoma County Conservation Council.
Among other endeavors, Galen volunteers at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park in Kenwood, California, where he leads nature walks, works on the trails, and relocates rattlesnakes from the campground there.
Sssnakes….
California Night Snake
It’s that time again: spring! Nature has been staging post-winter awakenings around here for weeks now, and due to what was another healthy rainy season, there is an abundance of plant life, which fuels a myriad of other life. Wildflowers, fawns, bees, lizards, and…snakes!
This little friend popped up in a pile of gravel on a trail work day last weekend. He/she is a California night snake (Hypsiglena torquata nuchalata), one of the rarest snakes in Sonoma County and although mildly venomous, known to be harmless to humans. California night snakes are nocturnal and are generally about 7 inches long at birth; this one was likely at its first molt. When coiled, it could have fit on a nickel. Their diet includes insects, lizards and other snakes.
Hummmmmmmmm
You may have noticed, on your treks up the Overlook Trail, that we have some fuzzy friends living in the base of a multi-trunk tree on the left just beyond the main trail/Rattlesnake Cutoff Trail junction. These European honey bees, also known as Western honey bees (Apis mellifera), are the most common kind of honey bee and are a generally docile sort with a placid temperament, only stinging when threatened.
Like all honey bees, European honey bees are extremely social, creating colonies of up to tens of thousands of bees, sometimes as high as 40,000 to 80,000. A hollow tree is an ideal habitat. The bees build intricate wax structures within to house food and their cooperatively raised brood. Colonial activities are organized via complex communication between individuals, untilizing both pheromones and the waggle dance!
So, enjoy the buzz as you go by and leave them bee. Considering that bees worldwide are seriously threatened by pests, diseases and pesticides, we count ourselves lucky to host these little friends.
Read more at iNaturalist.
Love, Lizard Style
Sonoma Overlook Trail, May 8, 2024
Words of affirmation, acts of service, receiving gifts, quality time, physical touch…the five classic Love Languages.
Lizards have their own seduction style. Redefining the term “love bite,” lizard courtship is known to include the male clenching his desired tightly behind the neck, for hours or even days, until she becomes ready to mate.
Sonoma Overlook Trail lizards are no exception; if you come upon a pair thusly engaged, please leave them undisturbed! The female will emerge from the ritual unharmed.
We Overlook Stewards revere lizards for their own sake as well as for a particular aspect of their role in the eco system that contributes to the protection of humans. Our local breeds of lizards, including the western fence lizard and the northern alligator lizard shown here, eat ticks and also contain a protein that kills the spirochetes in the guts of Lyme infected ticks. So if an infected tick bites one of these lizards, it’s cured of its Lyme Disease. This doesn’t preclude the need to take caution in regards to ticks, but it’s one more reason to appreciate our little friends on the trail.
Sonoma Overlook Trail • Montini Open Space Preserve 