What’s going on out on the land?
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.
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.
Snail trails on Birch
A lot of questions arise while looking at Snail feeding sign on a Birch tree at the Guelph Arboretum. Why Birch? Are they eating? How are they eating? What is the direction of travel?
Sometimes the answers are out there, and it’s just about looking a little deeper to figure it out.