BREAKNECK RIDGE,

MAY 26, 2007

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Rock Scramble and hike


Sara and I took the Metro North train past Cold Spring to the flagstop
Breakneck Ridge and got off the train with about one hundred (!) other people:






Sara is as interested in nature as I am, so we often stopped to look at
animals and plants, which was a nice change from the group hikes,
where the emphasis is more on the exercise aspect of hiking.







Note the blue scales on the belly of this Northern fence lizard
(Sceloporus undulatus hyacinthinus).











Probably a five-lined skink (Eumeces fasciatus).







This might be a Northern coal skink (Eumeces a. anthracinus).





This very pretty Eastern milk snake (Lampropeltis triangulum, not venomous)
was about two feet long and slid slowly through the forest, and I followed her
for about 10 minutes with my camera:






This means: "Don't get any closer or I'll bite!"










That's the Hudson river way beneath us.










This looks like a female of the Northern fence lizard
(Sceloporus undulatus hyacinthinus).













I still need to ask my colleagues what this tuft and the oak tree
is and what the chalcid (?) wasps were doing on it.
It looks remotely look a wool sower gall caused by the cynipid wasp
Callirhytis seminator on oak, but this is not Callirhytis.




This snake was very large, but unfortunately too fast for my camera:



It is either a Northern black racer (Coluber constrictor constrictor, not venomous) or a
black rat snake (Elaphe obsoleta, not venomous). Judging by the behavior (quickly
sliding away rather than staying put and coiling up), it might have been a racer.

I found the following three pics in the internet:
This is the black rat snake:



And this would be the black racer:







This is a little lake south of Lake Surprise:



Unfortunately, after the lake, the battery of my camera died
and I couldn't document all the other neat things we
discovered on the rest of the hike.

Having taken our time on the hike, we reached Cold Spring at 5:30 pm.
We had dinner in the Cold Spring Café and
took the train at 6:58 back to the city.


Click here for an overview of the species of snake in New York State.
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