Story and photos by Tyler Adams
You could spend a lifetime trying to find all of the critters and creatures around our forests. From the leaf litter to high up in the trees, there’s pretty much no blank spaces on the beautiful and diverse palette that exists from our backyard to the woods out back. I’ve seen my fair share of pretty interesting creatures and found it important to take a few moments to come back home and study a picture to really get to know some of them! Let’s take a short dive into some of these creatures and what they’re all about.
This first creature is an Oak Treehopper (Platycotis vittata). This gnarly looking little bug features tons of color and some odd appendages! That giant horn on its head is most definitely for looks, but the bright colors are for helping it fend off predators as it protects its babies. A lot of insects don’t get involved in parental care, so that’s pretty unique. They’re super small, so finding one will mean that much more since they’re about the size of a pencil eraser’s width!
The second creature is a little bit bigger, but not by much. It is an Eastern Red-Spotted Newt (Notophthalmus viridescens). This newt is probably a familiar friend if you go out hiking often or are around moist areas with decaying logs. That’s where they love to live. Oftentimes I’ll find these in leaf litter just off the trail as well. These little guys are in their juvenile stage when they look like this, and will eventually get a bit darker in color and their tail will take on more of a fin shape. That’s when they’ll return to and stay to live in the water too. That transition calls for a lot of energy; these newts are known to consume around 35,000 calories per year in snails, beetles and ants. Small numbers I say, but in the newt world that’s a feast!
The third and final creature I’d like to talk about is one that needs to come with a content warning (sorry Granny) but one of my favorite things to see while out! This is our common watersnake (Nerodia sipedon), pictured above. These are such beautiful and harmless nonvenomous snakes that are typically mistaken for the venomous cottonmouth. You can easily discern between the two by looking for the common watersnake’s more slender body, round pupils and the lack of pits on it’s face. However, if you’re close enough to see it’s face you may just need to remove yourself from that position!
Appreciating these things, from the super small and seemingly insignificant bugs to the scaly, approach-with-caution snakes is such a world filled with mystery just waiting to be solved. I’ve always known we have some bugs, “salamanders,” and snakes, but getting down to exactly what they are and the part they play in our vital ecosystems has been so fun and exciting to discover every time. Take a second and kneel down while you’re hiking the next time and try to find an Oak Treehopper on a branch, or maybe try to spot a couple newts in some leaf litter if we have a warm day in November! Whatever you uncover, take a mental picture or otherwise and come home and get down to exactly what it is you saw. You never know what’s out there until you look!
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