CONTRIBUTED PHOTO — Bullsnakes (Pituophis melanoleucus) are large snakes with a series of brown squarish blotches along the top side of their back. Just below that top row of big spots, are smaller spots of dark pigment. Bullsnakes are Iowa’s largest snake. They may range in length from 50 inches to as much as 72 inches (6 feet). They are constrictors, meaning that if they strike at a prey animal such as a mouse, rat, gopher, ground squirrel or even birds sometimes, they will quickly coil themselves around the body of the prey to squeeze it. That squeeze will not allow the prey to breathe, thus death is by suffocation. Snakes are part of Mother Nature’s predator/prey story and an entirely normal process in nature of eat or be eaten.

Snakes are important components of the natural world. Whether we humans realize it or not, the web of life must continue as it does when one wild animal finds, kills and eats the other.

Energy is transformed from one animal to the other. If you are ever in the right place, right time

situation to come across a snake in the process of eating its recently captured prey species, take diligent note. Make images with your cell phone camera, or regular camera, to help preserve that instant of time when Mother Nature was holding an outdoor classroom education experience just for you.

Today’s image was made by Don Hays of Albion. He was recently checking out his property on a warm fall day, similar to what we experienced this past week, when he spied not one, not two, but three large bullsnakes.

The smaller ones he estimated were about five feet long. The largest was easily six feet long and had a body girth as large as his arm. There are two snakes in this image. They are fairly easy to see as they sprawled out upon Hays’ lawn grasses.

Now imagine for a moment how these snakes would be well camouflaged if they were within a jungle of leaves and brush vegetation. They might have been completely bypassed unless a vibrating tail did not give the snake’s position away.

Bullsnakes are one of 27 snake species that call Iowa landscapes home. They live in both woodland and prairie habitats. The female lays eggs in the spring where there is ground warmth in the incubator.

Bullsnakes did their own burrows both for nesting and/or for finding and making a winter retreat somewhere below frost line. A burrow site is sculpted out of dry soil, and its coiled body works like a scoop to move loose dirt out of the chamber.

An old burrow from a groundhog, gopher or fox may be exploited and refined to the snake’s liking. The winter months will be spent in a lazy survival mode below the cold surface. Below the frost line soil temperatures are cool but not cold and just warm enough to ensure the snake can survive.

How long have snakes of one kind or another been around? A long, long time. Ancient snake skeleton fossils have been found preserved in rock strata in many parts of the world, and in North America, during our many intense glacial maximum episodes and interglacial warmer times, each cycle of icy retreat exposed the land to a new generation of habitats with plants of all kinds slowly retaking the landscape.

As the ice melted northward, the lands to the south warmed. Animals of all kinds exploited the vegetation taking root across the country. In these types of environments, everything from cool and wet to warm and dry offered all species places where they could adapt. Today in Iowa, a wide range of woodland, prairie and streamside habitats are places where each species may prosper.

Snakes continue to grow as long as they live. Periodically, they will shed their skins by rubbing against a tangle of twigs or stones. Bullsnakes may shed their skins from three to six times per year.

Young snakes will do more often as they eat and grow rapidly. A good supply of fat accumulated during the summer allows snakes to live during the coming winter deep inside a den site. Snakes may gather into large groups, such as common garter snakes may do, in part to seek safe places to overwinter.

Some of these hibernaculum sites are used generation after generation. In an overwintering den, there could also be several other species, all experiencing a low metabolic rate where life is in a suspended state until spring warmth returns to the soil.

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Pheasants Forever will hold their fundraising banquet on Saturday, Nov. 5. Tickets should already have been purchased in advance.

And if you did, then you will experience a grand treat of meeting with friends who are also outdoor adventure seekers. The PF banquet is being held at the Midnight Ballroom, 1700 S. Center St. in Marshalltown. Doors open at 5 p.m. with lots of games, raffles, a fine dinner and live and silent auctions to follow.

Regarding pheasant season hunting that opened on Oct. 29, a good number of hunters enjoyed excellent warm weather to seek this most popular upland game bird. Many farm cornfields had been harvested, and that will help move pheasants into grassy habitats. Hunters can expect to put many miles on their boots in order to check out habitats where birds are likely to be. Persistence is one key to successful hunting. There are several public hunting areas in Marshall County where pheasants are likely to be. Getting them will not necessarily be easy.

That is part of the enjoyment of being with friends, watching a sporting dog work the fields for scents, and experiencing the surprise and thrill of having a cackling rooster pheasant rise into the air in its attempt to escape.

A three bird per day legal limit must be adhered to by hunters. Possession limit is 12. Pheasant season closed on Jan. 10 of next year.

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November is here at last. It is a magic time for outdoor adventures and outdoor observations. It is transition time as the fall season is fully engaged.

Our earth in its orbit around the sun is now getting much less sunlight energy in the northern hemisphere. Regarding daily weather patterns, expect possible big changes quickly as a “normal” outcome of the variability of weather events.

Right now, we may be basking in warmth that is above normal. However, history has shown us that complacency about November is not a good thing. A classic story of the Armistice Day (Nov. 11) storm and blizzard of 1940 can be found in the history books of Iowa and the Midwest.

I have written about this storm in past years, so I’ll not repeat too much of it. But still, it is a thing to remember how a mild, warm Nov. 11, 1940, turned deadly for many people. Hundreds of folks lost their lives to this sudden storm when air temperatures dropped rapidly in advance of a strong cold front advancing from Canada.

Strong winds and rain at first came crashing in, and then rain turned to sleet, sleet to snow — lots of it — and winds blowing the snow into blinding blizzard conditions. Waterfowl hunters on the Mississippi River and other wetland areas could not believe how plentiful the ducks were as wave after wave of waterfowl piled into any marsh, pond or river in attempts to set down in sheltered places.

Hunters who had gone out dressed for warm conditions found out too late that they were not properly prepared for blizzard conditions. Many froze to death.

Nov. 1 for us folks living at 42 degrees north latitude had a daylight length of 10 hours and 23 minutes. At the end of November, we will have lost a full hour. Day length will then be 9 hours and 23 minutes, and with the change back from daylight savings time to regular standard time, our bodies will have to adjust to less and less sunshine.

Wildlife species of all kinds take all this in stride. Less sunlight each day is something that has been around for eons of geologic time. Adaptations by critters great and small have been worked out.

Some migrate if they can. Others move from high country to lower elevation winter habitats. All are aware in their own specific ways of a thing biologists call photo-period. It is defined as the cyclical decrease in sunlight available each fall.

The brains of every critter, and also people, take note of less and less light. Our pituitary gland recognizes this phenomenon each and every year.

Hunters for deer sometimes become engaged in spirited debate about a thing called the rut. Will it be early this year or late? Save your breath and take note.

The facts are that it will be the same intense flurry of activity this year as last year and all the years and centuries of long ago. White-tailed deer have a breeding season that is typically peaking during the first two weeks of November, and this happens regardless of a November warm weather spell, rain or a cold storm, or every other weather event, mild, moderate or severe.

Mother Nature has timed the rut to happen now to ensure that fawns will be born next spring at just the right time for new spring vegetation growth and high nutrient value for the doe deer. A doe deer that is eating well will help ensure survival for her offspring.

That is a biological fact, and facts matter.

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Garry Brandenburg is the retired director of the Marshall County Conservation Board. He is a graduate of Iowa State University with a BS degree in Fish & Wildlife Biology.

Contact him at:

P.O. Box 96

Albion, IA 50005