http://www.chron.com/news/article/Copperhead-engage-in-nightly-summertime-feeding-8399696.php
The first copperhead was not a big deal; if you live in the country surrounded by healthy oak/pine forest you expect to come across one of these common, smallish, generally non-aggressive but potentially dangerous pit vipers whose cryptic camouflage gives them their name.
Our chickens regularly catch, kill and eat these venomous snakes when the fowl find them under the duff or rotted logs or other cover when they are foraging in the woods surrounding our place. And I can count on my heart stopping for a couple of beats a half-dozen or so times a year when I chance upon one while cleaning brush/limb/log piles or otherwise rooting around in copperhead habitat on the property.
But by the time I'd had my sixth nocturnal copperhead encounter in a week, I knew this was different.
All but one of the snakes were found within a few feet of the same spot on my nightly walk down the 200-foot driveway to the mailbox, and the other was within 50 feet or so of the others.
"Let me guess," Andrew Gluesenkamp, herpetologist with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, said as I recounted my recent rash of nighttime encounters with the most common venomous snake in eastern Texas. "Was it between about 9 and midnight?"
Yes.
"Do you have any big trees - white oaks, especially - in your yard?"
Yep; a couple were within a few yards of where I'd seen five copperheads, and others are scattered over the acre-or-so lawn.
"What did you hear?"
Huh?
"What were the sounds you could hear?"
Cicadas - "locusts" to most Texans. The woods vibrated with the sound of male cicadas thrumming their mating calls.
"There's your answer," Gluesenkamp said. "You were likely seeing copperheads involved in a feeding aggregation."
Sunset congregation
Turns out, herpetologists and others studying snakes have only recently begun to document what appears to be a common, if previously little noted or studied, behavioral phenomenon among copperheads. It's pretty amazing. And understanding what happens at night this time of year in yards and around camps and hunting lease trailers and other areas in copperhead range could go a long way toward helping folks avoid potentially painful and disconcerting encounters.
"Until you see it, you won't believe it," said Kristofer Swanson, whose Katy Snakes business involves removal of unwanted snakes as well as consulting and safety training inevitably focused on venomous snakes.
Here's what happens:
Each summer, usually beginning around the first of June and continuing into September, cicada larvae that have spent their developmental period burrowed in the soil around the tree roots on which they feed, begin emerging for their metamorphosis into adults.
The larvae, looking like hump-backed beetles, begin digging their way to the surface around dusk. They emerge from the ground, crawl to the nearest vertical structure (usually a tree), climb a foot or two up the trunk, their "shell" splits along its back and the adult cicada works its way out.
Some of the highest-volume movements of cicada larvae are to large oak trees on lawns.
These nocturnal emergences of cicada larvae are like the opening of an all-you-can-eat dinner for some wildlife. Yellow-crowned night herons are one of the species that regularly prey on emerging cicada larvae. Copperheads are another. And when the cicada dinner bell rings, it can draw a copper-colored, fanged crowd.
"They love those nice, clean lawns," Swanson said.
As darkness falls on a summer evening and cicada larvae begin emerging, copperheads head to their feeding stations.
"About 9 o'clock, copperheads start coming out of the woods, and they make a beeline for large oak trees," Gluesenkamp said. "It's really pretty incredible, and suggests copperheads may move a lot more and a lot farther than we thought."
The snakes take up stations at the base of trees or among the exposed roots where they easily pick off lumbering cicada larvae aiming to climb the trunk.
And the diner can get crowded. Every copperhead within crawling distance might congregate around prime feeding spots. How many?
Longtime behavior
"The density can be pretty tremendous - a dozen or more copperheads around the base of a single oak tree," Gluesenkamp said.
Herpetologists have over recent years discovered and documented several of these nocturnal gatherings of cicada-gobbling copperheads.
"This is not a new behavior; it's been going on forever," Gluesenkamp said.
But it's happened under cover of darkness and not noticed, reported or studied by many people.
That's changing. And Texas is where some of the insights into this behavior have been gained.
Probably the most astonishing example of such nocturnal copperhead gatherings has come from a tract near Sweeny in Brazoria County. The landowner contacted herpetologists, reporting seeing dozens of copperheads on his property during summer evenings.
"To be honest, I was sure the guy was exaggerating," Swanson said.
But he met the landowner one evening a couple of years ago and went to collect what snakes he could find. He knew the snakes had arrived for their evening feeding when he saw an owl swoop though the gloom, grab a copperhead from the base of a tree and fly into the darkness.
"I caught 33 (copperheads) the first night," Swanson said.
All were captured in about 90 minutes. Two nights later, he caught another 27 for a total of 59 copperheads from a 1.5-acre lawn.
"This is happening in a lot of places," Swanson said of the gatherings, although most are not nearly as large as the ones on the Brazoria County tract.
Brief but intense
Most, probably, are like what seems to happen in my yard, where a small number of copperheads gather for their evening meals. And the event doesn't last long. The cicada emergence usually begins at dusk and ends two or three hours later.
"By midnight or so, it's over," Gluesenkamp said.
When the locust diner shuts down, the copperheads head back to their respective territories.
Researchers hope to learn more about these nocturnal congregations of copperheads - how far they travel to these feeding sites, population densities and dynamics, etc. But tracking copperheads - fitting them with GPS transmitters that allow monitoring of movement - is an expensive proposition, and there has not been a lot of effort made to study the natural history of a snake most thought was pretty well understood. And it doesn't help that copperheads, being venomous, are not exactly popular with most folks.
That could change as recent scientific insights indicate copperheads might hold a key to improving human health. Over the past decade, medical research has shown contortrostatin, a protein found in copperhead venom, has proved effective in treating some forms of cancer, particularly breast cancer.
The Texas copperheads Swanson collects are used to produce venom for this medical research.
"They are really incredible creatures," Gluesenkamp said. "There's still a lot we can learn about them and from them."
No kidding.
But just watch where you step if you're walking across your lawn between dark and midnight in the summer.
The first copperhead was not a big deal; if you live in the country surrounded by healthy oak/pine forest you expect to come across one of these common, smallish, generally non-aggressive but potentially dangerous pit vipers whose cryptic camouflage gives them their name.
Our chickens regularly catch, kill and eat these venomous snakes when the fowl find them under the duff or rotted logs or other cover when they are foraging in the woods surrounding our place. And I can count on my heart stopping for a couple of beats a half-dozen or so times a year when I chance upon one while cleaning brush/limb/log piles or otherwise rooting around in copperhead habitat on the property.
But by the time I'd had my sixth nocturnal copperhead encounter in a week, I knew this was different.
All but one of the snakes were found within a few feet of the same spot on my nightly walk down the 200-foot driveway to the mailbox, and the other was within 50 feet or so of the others.
"Let me guess," Andrew Gluesenkamp, herpetologist with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, said as I recounted my recent rash of nighttime encounters with the most common venomous snake in eastern Texas. "Was it between about 9 and midnight?"
Yes.
"Do you have any big trees - white oaks, especially - in your yard?"
Yep; a couple were within a few yards of where I'd seen five copperheads, and others are scattered over the acre-or-so lawn.
"What did you hear?"
Huh?
"What were the sounds you could hear?"
Cicadas - "locusts" to most Texans. The woods vibrated with the sound of male cicadas thrumming their mating calls.
"There's your answer," Gluesenkamp said. "You were likely seeing copperheads involved in a feeding aggregation."
Sunset congregation
Turns out, herpetologists and others studying snakes have only recently begun to document what appears to be a common, if previously little noted or studied, behavioral phenomenon among copperheads. It's pretty amazing. And understanding what happens at night this time of year in yards and around camps and hunting lease trailers and other areas in copperhead range could go a long way toward helping folks avoid potentially painful and disconcerting encounters.
"Until you see it, you won't believe it," said Kristofer Swanson, whose Katy Snakes business involves removal of unwanted snakes as well as consulting and safety training inevitably focused on venomous snakes.
Here's what happens:
Each summer, usually beginning around the first of June and continuing into September, cicada larvae that have spent their developmental period burrowed in the soil around the tree roots on which they feed, begin emerging for their metamorphosis into adults.
The larvae, looking like hump-backed beetles, begin digging their way to the surface around dusk. They emerge from the ground, crawl to the nearest vertical structure (usually a tree), climb a foot or two up the trunk, their "shell" splits along its back and the adult cicada works its way out.
Some of the highest-volume movements of cicada larvae are to large oak trees on lawns.
These nocturnal emergences of cicada larvae are like the opening of an all-you-can-eat dinner for some wildlife. Yellow-crowned night herons are one of the species that regularly prey on emerging cicada larvae. Copperheads are another. And when the cicada dinner bell rings, it can draw a copper-colored, fanged crowd.
"They love those nice, clean lawns," Swanson said.
As darkness falls on a summer evening and cicada larvae begin emerging, copperheads head to their feeding stations.
"About 9 o'clock, copperheads start coming out of the woods, and they make a beeline for large oak trees," Gluesenkamp said. "It's really pretty incredible, and suggests copperheads may move a lot more and a lot farther than we thought."
The snakes take up stations at the base of trees or among the exposed roots where they easily pick off lumbering cicada larvae aiming to climb the trunk.
And the diner can get crowded. Every copperhead within crawling distance might congregate around prime feeding spots. How many?
Longtime behavior
"The density can be pretty tremendous - a dozen or more copperheads around the base of a single oak tree," Gluesenkamp said.
Herpetologists have over recent years discovered and documented several of these nocturnal gatherings of cicada-gobbling copperheads.
"This is not a new behavior; it's been going on forever," Gluesenkamp said.
But it's happened under cover of darkness and not noticed, reported or studied by many people.
That's changing. And Texas is where some of the insights into this behavior have been gained.
Probably the most astonishing example of such nocturnal copperhead gatherings has come from a tract near Sweeny in Brazoria County. The landowner contacted herpetologists, reporting seeing dozens of copperheads on his property during summer evenings.
"To be honest, I was sure the guy was exaggerating," Swanson said.
But he met the landowner one evening a couple of years ago and went to collect what snakes he could find. He knew the snakes had arrived for their evening feeding when he saw an owl swoop though the gloom, grab a copperhead from the base of a tree and fly into the darkness.
"I caught 33 (copperheads) the first night," Swanson said.
All were captured in about 90 minutes. Two nights later, he caught another 27 for a total of 59 copperheads from a 1.5-acre lawn.
"This is happening in a lot of places," Swanson said of the gatherings, although most are not nearly as large as the ones on the Brazoria County tract.
Brief but intense
Most, probably, are like what seems to happen in my yard, where a small number of copperheads gather for their evening meals. And the event doesn't last long. The cicada emergence usually begins at dusk and ends two or three hours later.
"By midnight or so, it's over," Gluesenkamp said.
When the locust diner shuts down, the copperheads head back to their respective territories.
Researchers hope to learn more about these nocturnal congregations of copperheads - how far they travel to these feeding sites, population densities and dynamics, etc. But tracking copperheads - fitting them with GPS transmitters that allow monitoring of movement - is an expensive proposition, and there has not been a lot of effort made to study the natural history of a snake most thought was pretty well understood. And it doesn't help that copperheads, being venomous, are not exactly popular with most folks.
That could change as recent scientific insights indicate copperheads might hold a key to improving human health. Over the past decade, medical research has shown contortrostatin, a protein found in copperhead venom, has proved effective in treating some forms of cancer, particularly breast cancer.
The Texas copperheads Swanson collects are used to produce venom for this medical research.
"They are really incredible creatures," Gluesenkamp said. "There's still a lot we can learn about them and from them."
No kidding.
But just watch where you step if you're walking across your lawn between dark and midnight in the summer.
