What’s going on out on the land?

Differentiating between Cepaea nemoralis and Cepaea hortensis
snails, gastropods, invertebrates byron murray snails, gastropods, invertebrates byron murray

Differentiating between Cepaea nemoralis and Cepaea hortensis

Snails have captured my attention lately and I am getting more and more curious as time goes on.
It isn’t like my curiosity has suddenly been triggered, but rather, it has grown over the past year or so. This curiosity and interest tends to fall back to one or two specific species which I encounter most often. They are the common species in my area of Southern Ontario in the Cepaea genus, Cepaea hortensis and Cepaea nemoralis. But how do you tell them apart?
There is one way to know, but it can be a bit tricky.

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Tracking journal 2021.10.09 pt. 1

Tracking journal 2021.10.09 pt. 1

Very shortly after we started out from the parking lot, I noticed the pale long form of what I first thought was a drowned Earthworm in a puddle on the gravel. I walked up and immediately recognized the scales as the underside (ventral) of a snake, but which snake? As I bent down to pick the snake out of the water I noticed they were very small. This narrowed it down a little in my mind and then confirmed as soon as I flipped the snake over.


Thus begins a fairly long and detailed account of the first half of our tracking meet up on October 9, 2021.

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