snails
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Three for Thanksgiving
A trio of things found in a southeastern New Hampshire garden this summer by our Thanksgiving dinner host. Burying beetle, Nicrophorus orbicollis. Gray lancetooth snail, Haplotrema concavum (I think). Six-spotted tiger beetle, Cicindela sexguttata. Let’s take a closer look at the latter:The elytra are parted to reveal the underwings.
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Back 40 Snail
A snail in the Back 40, hunkered down on the fence. Invasive Cepaea nemoralis, no stranger here. Showed up on Friday. Some mucous glue holds this onto the vertical surface, the animal withdrawn deep into the whorls of the shell.
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Stomach-foot
Snails are members of the class Gastropoda, a term derived from Greek words for stomach and foot, based on the mistaken belief that their foot is also their stomach. In fact their guts are usually located in that part of the snail that stays inside its shell. Here’s what it looks like from the earth’s…
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Calvert Vaux Park
Calvert Vaux was born in London (the family name rhymes with “fox”), immigrated to America, worked with Andrew Jackson Dowling, the founding father of American landscape architecture, and published Villas and Cottages, a landmark of American neo-Gothic design. Vaux’s great claim to fame, however, is teaming up with Frederick Law Olmsted to work on both…
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Virgin Gorda Beachcombing
Various intertidal snails were found on old coral, mangrove roots, rocks, coconut shells.
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All Creatures Great and Small
Mostly small. And mostly slimy (cue Monty Python). More tidying up in the Back 40 in preparation for winter. My backyard is a Brutalist expanse of poured concrete, so I use numerous pots for planters. All were salvaged from the street. There’s also a found-on-the-sidewalk wooden box, festively decorated with painted balloons. While moving this…
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Tiny disk
Tidying up the Back 40 (inches) this time of year inevitably unearths some signs of life settling in for the winter. This is one of several very small disk snails I’ve found attached to brick or metal outside. I’ve seen these critters before and think they are probably Discus rotundatus, immigrants from Europe like many…
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More snails
I found this little specimen in North Andover, MA. I think it’s Oxyloma retusum, the blunt ambersnail. This is a fairly similar animal, but I’m not sure it’s the same species since the shell is not glossy or amber. What do you think? I found this one on Nantucket, MA. Is that snail turd there?…
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Snail Tales, part III
For a change of pace, a fresh water gastropod, which means I did not find these in the Back 40. The species is a Brooklyn resident, however: I took this photo at the Valley Water in Green-Wood. I think the snail is Viviparus malleatus, the Chinese mystery snail, a.k.a. the Japanese trapdoor snail. (Like many…
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Snail tales, part II
They leave a trail of slime and eat your plants, or at least some of them do, but gastropods, with their shells, love darts (!), and hermaphroditism, are as remarkable as any other life-form. (Until you’ve seen slugs mating, my friend, you have not lived. A future post will get sluggy. ) Last autumn, while…
Backyard and Beyond 