New member!

[Spankenstyne]

Heya Nir, great to see you made it over here. Looking forward to more of your great photo essays.

[ConcinusMan]

I like posts with pictures mouahahah! Hope you didn't have enough cause I've got lots of pics of wild garters!

Is there such thing as "enough" ??? No. Not really, because then it becomes "too much" and too much = "Never enough"

It would be extremely helpful if notes about habitat, location, and variability were provided though. Makes it more interesting.

[Nir]

Yes Charles, I do know Pat and have met him a few times. I would love to go herping with you guys if we could find a suitable date... hehe A hard thing to do with me, as I am the kind of guy that runs around like crazy all the time!

Hey sprakenstyne! Glad to see you here!

Mr. ConcinnusMan, here is the definition of "enough" :

• as much as necessary; "Have I eaten enough?"; (`plenty' is nonstandard) "I've had plenty, thanks"
• an adequate quantity; a quantity that is large enough to achieve a purpose; "enough is as good as a feast"; "there is more than a sufficiency of lawyers in this country"

So reading your reply, I take it that you haven't had "plenty"... Or that the adequate quantity is a number close to ∞ therefore quite unreachable.... sadly. So since I have no choice. Another selection of pictures for you guys!

Huge female eastern:


Trio of adult basking in situ after a short rain:


Nice high yellow eastern male:


This is interesting. Basking in situ garter. Outside temps 12-15 Celcius. Ground temp 20 Celcius... Snakes temperature:



Small orange eastern


If a garter could measure 9 feet. What would it look like?







My guess is something like this:

[charles parenteau]

NIr what about the snow in Sherbrooke how much did you get????

[Quibble]

Welcome from Michigan!

[Nir]

NIr what about the snow in Sherbrooke how much did you get????

We didn't get as much as you! But we got some... Really ****** temperature if you ask me!!

[ConcinusMan]

I was going to say that pics 1 and 3 look like T.s. parietalis.

So educate me. Does a T.s. parietalis have to have red spots? I mean what makes you call them easterns? Where's the distinction? (there I go splitting hairs again)

[Nir]

Really, I could not tell you what phenotypical characteristics distinguish the T. s. parietalis from the T. s. sirtalis. Most T. s. parietalis I've seen pictured seem to have the red on the sides. And, normally, easterns do not have the small red blotches found in most parietalis. But in both cases, I've seen, either pictures or specimens, some individual that could easily be mistaken for antoher ssp. if locality wasn't known....

As for the pictures showed here, they are from snakes around the Gatineau/Ottawa region in Quebec/Ontario therefore out of the range of T. s. parietalis which stops in western Ontario.

[drache]

great photos again - thanks
this coming Saturday I am doing a few workshops with my reptiles at a primary school science day event. The day's theme will be energy, so my workshops will be tailored around that, addressing thermo-regulation, the carbon footprints of pets, and the personal energy expenditures of keeping them. your temperature measurements remind me of how efficiently they absorb solar heat. it's quite amazing, isn't it?

[ConcinusMan]

OK, then that explains it. If you really are outside their range, then they must be easterns. Man, that black and yellow one is very handsome.