First, I have added a link on the main menu to a new video (UC Santa Cruz Video). Bethany Augliere and Brendan Bane from the UC Santa Cruz Science Communication Program visited the EYNC Rattlesnake Study last May and recently posted the resulting video, which satisfies one of the requirements for their graduate degree program. I hope you enjoy it!
Back to baby rattlesnakes
As of 22 September, all three telemetered reproductive females (39, 53 and 75) had left their birthing shelters. Two are clearly hunting and the third is just a few feet away, being courted by a male.
Female 39 produced a brood in the same hollow log for the third year in a row. Then, immediately following the kids’ neonatal sheds on 14–15 September, she made a long move to the same place in the blackberry thicket on the other side of San Lorenzo Way – also for the third year in a row. As I observed last year, she apparently knows where to find a reliable meal after the kids leave the house!
Female 75 abandoned the ground squirrel burrow she had been in for weeks between 17 and 19 September and moved to a blackberry thicket near the Duck Pond. Although I never observed babies in the burrow with her, the tunnel was deep and she was sometimes out of sight of my three-foot-long Burrow Camera. After she left, however, a single neonatal shed “skin” was visible in the burrow and I recovered it yesterday. Hopefully, DNA from it will confirm that Female 75 produced a litter and reveal who the father was. Since multiple paternity is common in rattlesnake broods, the DNA from this skin will not identify the paternity of any other siblings.
Female 53 left her shelter in the stream bed between 19 and 22 September, moving only about 4 meters to another shelter where she is accompanied by a non-telemetered male, CROR 72 (green/yellow paint in his rattle). Note the postpartum skin fold in the frame shot (below) and then watch the brief video of the two rattlesnakes together. (click here)
The underground void that Female 53 just left remains occupied by an unmarked female with babies. You can see fresh neonate skins on top of and stuck to this female and it is difficult to tell if the kids in the video have shed yet. I suspect the recently shed skins belong to Female 53’s litter which has already departed and the remaining babies belong to the unmarked female. If I am right, these babies will remain with mom for a few days more. However, if the fresh sheds belong to them, they and their mother will be gone the next time I visit. It is important to remember that maternal accompaniment of neonate rattlesnakes has only been known since radiotelemetry has been used to study these animals. Watch the video here.
So it appears that the 2016 birthing season is nearly complete. People around the American River Parkway and other places where rattlesnakes live will be encountering baby rattlesnakes with some frequency between now and the onset of cold weather. But, at the size of pencils, the little guys have many predators and few of them survive until spring.