snails
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Sinister Snails
Little freshwater mollusks in the Physa genus, according to the iNaturalist community. The aperture is on the left side, hence sinistral. In the Sylvan Water. How did they get here? Did they arrive via muddy duck feet, a noted transportation system for plants and animals?Less than a centimeter long, with some smaller. To the nearly…
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Sliding into Monday…
This is good snail weather. Near sunset, the great wall holding up Sunset Park was awash these guys/gals.
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More
You can, I think, get most of these either by shape or name. Ek, alm, ask, are so close, and hassel…The famous escargot, Helix pomatia. Also known as Roman, Burgundy, or simply edible snail. Or, when in the Rome of the north, Snäckor. Introduced, running rampant in a slick way.Yeah, stickmygga.Damn it! Found on a…
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Snails on Saturday
The rain in the middle of the week bought the snails out in the Back 40. Half a dozen were visible from the door for the rest of the week. All are the big ones, Cepaea nemoralis, an introduced species. I’m sure there are others. These two were getting frisky. More snails: the surprising abundance…
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Cepaea nemoralis
Slicking up the back door. Faster than you think.
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Mollusks
Some of the highlights of our gastropod crawl in Central Park on Monday and Tuesday: Helisoma trivolvis, called the Ramshorn or Three-whorled Rams Horn, a fresh-water species fished out of the Meer. This specimen, the only one found, was 1/2″ or 14mm long.The ground was quite dry, so we knew that land snails would be…
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Spring Cleaning Snails
Three different specimens of our old friend Cepaea nemoralis.The snail’s “foot,” which gave rise to the name for this whole class of Molluscs, Gastropoda, which means simply stomach-foot (and is anatomically incorrect; the stomach is in the portion of the animal that is inside the shell).Just a size comparison with some other snails found during…
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Snug as a snail in a snail
I like the idea of one gastropod hanging out in the shell of another. You’ve seen this before: the Queen Conch shells I lugged home — not from the Caribbean, but from Dead Horse Bay’s eroding landfill — provide an excellent shelter for terrestrial snails. Cepaea nemoralis, the Brown-lipped snail. A new squatter, as an…
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Tiny snail
Responding to my last post, snail maven Aydin Örstan thought the third of the terrestrial snails harboring on the marine snail shell in my backyard was Vallonia costata. If so — and it looks like it to this mollusk amateur — that would make for five different species of snails found in my concrete slab…
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Queen Mother Conch
Some time ago, I found a couple of queen conch shells, Strombus gigas, at Dead Horse Bay. Needless to say, this is not this tropical species typical habitat. But the landfill at Dead Horse Bay turns up the strangest things sometimes. Perhaps these were somebody’s souvenirs once. Anyway, a ruthless recycler, I put the shells…
Backyard and Beyond 