Common Gartersnakes Giving Birth
Common Gartersnakes mate soon after emerging from hibernation in the spring, in March or April, and four months later the females give birth to live young. The newborn snakes are 5 to 9 inches long at birth and from day one have to fend for themselves. Their diet at this early stage consists of earthworms, insects, slugs, tadpoles, small frogs and fish. If there is an abundant supply of food, the young snakes can grow as much as 1 ½ inches a month during their first year. Earthworms are their preferred diet and gartersnakes are known for their ability to find them, even underground. It turns out that earthworms produce a chemical substance in their skin that is easily detected by (and attractive to) Common Gartersnakes. (Thanks to Eli Holland, who located the worm-eating newborn Common Gartersnake in the photograph.)
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Avian Parents Hard At Work
To appreciate the parental demands on birds, consider the feeding habits of a pair of American Robins with a nest full of young. Both parents feed their 3 – 4 nestlings, delivering 6 – 7 feedings an hour, each one to a single nestling. (Parents tend to arrive with food at a particular location on the nest rim, so there is much jockeying for a position near this spot on the part of the nestlings.) Each nestling gets 35-40 feedings per day. This amounts to almost half a pound of food delivered to the nest every day for the 13 days that young are in the nest. Even then, the parents’ work is not done, as they continue to feed their fledglings for up to three weeks after the young leave the nest.
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