Went for a walk this morning looking for recently emerged snakes like I did last year and almost trod on these two splendid specimens out basking in the gentle heat of the early spring sunshine. I can’t tell if they are male or female or even whether they are recently emerged from hibernation and have mated yet. I am guessing the coiled one is female and one lying stretched out is male owing to the broadness of the female head and the length of the male tail. Neither have cloudy eyes suggesting the will slough their skins, but the female has mud on her face which I’m guessing means she hasn’t sloughed yet so is newly emerged. The male looks a bit thin so maybe hasn’t eaten yet. So i guess they are newly emerged after 6 months underground and are yet to eat, slough and mate. Wonderful to see them again :-)
Also amazing to see these extraordinary fungus fruiting bodies – small baskets holding what look like eggs or bread buns. I tweezered one out and it is a flat disk with a pimple on the bottom. Rain drops or wind have dislodged some which have become fixed to the wood around the parent bodies. Wood from a discarded palette so don’t know if the parent hyphae are indigenous to the area.
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